


Baker Street: Part V

by Cerdic519



Series: Elementary 366 [16]
Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett, Laurel and Hardy (Movies), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle, Supernatural
Genre: 221B Baker Street, Army, Assassination, Attempted Murder, Bacon, Bathing/Washing, Begging, Berkshire, Boats and Ships, Bombs, Caring, Chocolate, Circus, Close Friendship, Codes & Ciphers, Coffee, Deception, Disguise, Doctors & Physicians, England - Freeform, Escape, F/M, Fake Character Death, Family, Fan-fiction, Feelings, Flowers, France - Freeform, Gay Sex, Government Conspiracy, Guns, Inheritance, Johnlock - Freeform, Justice, Lancashire, Lawyers, Lincolnshire, London, M/M, Male Prostitution, Middlesex, Minor Character Death, Murder, Nebraska, Organized Crime, Pigs, Poison, Police, Politics, Protectiveness, Rats, Savages - Freeform, Servants, Sleeping Together, Slow Burn, Sussex, Trains, Trauma, Trees, United States, Victorian, acid attacks, character injury, cover-up, essex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-06
Updated: 2020-05-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 16:53:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 26
Words: 72,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24040126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cerdic519/pseuds/Cerdic519
Summary: The Complete Cases Of Sherlock Holmes And John Watson. All 366 cases plus assorted interludes, hiatuses, codas &c.1890-1891. The Moriarty Years, Part Two. Mrs. Hudson is rightly on her guard, Sherlock's brother Randall makes yet another stupid decision (see under fish excreting in a marine environment), and his other brother Guilford gets hit with a tray. What with lost pigs, confusing conundra, dodgy doctors, interesting inheritances and vandalized trees the great detective has his hands more than full – before the attacks get even closer to home! But the great detective has allies as well who rally to his cause. Even though, with a deadly climax many thousands of miles from Baker Street it will take a miracle to get both him and John through it all in one piece, and at an American house called 'Reichenbach' the great detective's luck seems to have finally run out as John sees his friend blown to kingdom come.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Lucifer/OMC, Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Series: Elementary 366 [16]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1555741
Kudos: 25





	1. Contents

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vignahara](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vignahara/gifts), [KezialovesShandJohn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KezialovesShandJohn/gifts).



> This series is completely written and will be updated daily until done.  
> New cases are marked ☼.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Contents page.

** 1890 **

**Interlude: Friends**  
by Sergeant Gawain LeStrade  
_The policeman muses on family, friends and, just possibly, cake_

 **Case 165: The Adventure Of The New Girl ☼**  
by Mrs. Violet Hudson  
_Mrs. Hudson is suspicious of a new maid at 221B_

 **Case 166: The Destruction Of Viper's Bay**  
by Doctor John Watson, M.D.  
_Another government mess, and Mr. Randall Holmes gets a shock_

 **Case 167: The Adventure Of The Slain Knight**  
by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire  
_The Abbas Parva killing - and Sherlock has someone murdered!_

 **Case 168: The Adventure Of The Copper Beeches**  
by Doctor John Watson, M.D.  
_A young schoolboy is worried about the trees in his garden_

 **Case 169: Heir On A G-String ☼**  
by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire  
_Sherlock meets yet another relative - the unconventional Doctor 'Chuck' Norris_

 **Case 170: The Adventure Of Heath Row**  
by Doctor John Watson, M.D.  
_Sherlock secures a formidable ally in his ongoing war with Moriarty_

 **Interlude: A Little Chat**  
by Lady Aelfrida Holmes  
_Lady Holmes 'explains' a few things to her fourth son_

 **Case 171: The Adventure Of King Athelstan**  
by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire  
_Sherlock's mother inveigles him into tracking down a missing pig!_

 **Case 172: The Adventure Of The Bath Salts ☼**  
by Mr. Campbell Kerr, Esquire  
_The vile Moriarty tries a new method of eliminating Sherlock_

 **Interlude: Floored**  
by Mr. Lucifer Garrick, Esquire  
_Carlyon Holmes's son Adam pays Lucifer Garrick an untimely visit_

 **Case 173: The Adventure Of The Deadly Drops ☼**  
by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire  
_Moriarty turns his attentions to John, and Sherlock is nearly caught unprepared_

 **Case 174: The Adventure Of The Red-Headed League**  
by Doctor John Watson, M.D.  
_Sherlock has to solve a riddle to secure another ally against Moriarty_

 **Case 175: The Adventure Of The Little Match-Girl ☼**  
by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire  
_Moriarty sinks lower in his efforts, but Gravely Displeases the wrong lady_

 **Case 176: The Adventure Of The Knuckle-Duster**  
by Doctor John Watson, M.D.  
_John gets a shock as an unwelcome face from the past helps out_

 **Case 177: The Adventure Of The Giant Rat**  
by Doctor John Watson, M.D.  
_Another horror stalks the East End – is Moriarty involved in this too?_

 **Interlude: Too Good To Be True**  
by Mrs. Violet Hudson  
_Mrs. Hudson is still on her guard – which is just as well_

 **Case 178: Family Ties ☼**  
by Mr. Lucifer Garrick, Esquire  
_Lucifer Garrick discovers something terrible – another Moriarty!_

 **Case 179: The Adventure Of Podsnappery**  
by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire  
_John's fellow doctor Peter Goodfellow proves an excellent shot_

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** 1891 **

**Case 180: The Adventure Of The French Letters**  
by Doctor John Watson, M.D.  
_The French government resorts to violence, so Sherlock steps in_

 **Case 181: The Adventure Of The White Daffodils ☼**  
by Inspector Tobias Gregson  
_A small and flowery case leads to much bigger things_

 **Interlude: Royal Ruminations**  
by Mrs. Margaret Ball ('Queen Molly')  
_A Queen is Concerned_

 **Case 182: The Adventure Of The Warrenders**  
by Miss Millicent Nigella Warrender  
_Some people will do anything for money – unfortunately for them_

 **Case 183: The Final Problem**  
by Doctor John Watson, M.D.  
_The final showdown in Reichenbach, U.S.A._

 **Interlude: Life Of Riley**  
by Acting Deputy Sheriff Emmett Riley  
_A crime scene investigation is suddenly curtailed_

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	2. Interlude: Friends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1889\. There are friends, and there are true friends.

_[Narration by Sergeant Gawain LeStrade]_

A lot of the lads at the stations I worked in my time looked down their noses at the idea of anyone bringing a consulting detective onto a case, and I always believed that my bosses would have taken the same attitude had my friend Mr. Holmes's great brain not wrought so many successes for which, showing a greatness of heart that was typical of the man, he allowed me to take the credit for (he was also friends with that toffee-nosed Gregson but you couldn't have it all). As an added bonus Mr. Holmes always seemed to choose landladies who baked the most excellent cakes, although it wasn't true that I always chanced to call in on baking days. 

Not every single baking day. I was sure I'd missed one some time. Law of averages; I had to have done.

Gally† is giving me a knowing look for some reason. No idea why.

My family is as common as muck, and even in a place like London Town that can set a bobby back if he's not careful. I was lucky that my first boss in the service had been Fraser Macdonald, a man who hated pretty much all men equally though he was always fair to me. Mr. Holmes helped me out on a number of cases to assist him, and I'm sure as eggs is eggs that it was a combination of my boss's support and Mr. Holmes's solving the Crooked Man case last year and allowing me to take the credit had seen me promoted to inspector. Mr. Holmes also stood by the boss in his own time of trouble, although I still find I weird that when I do see him he is always smiling, especially when he has young Smith with him which is pretty much all the time. It's just... _the old man smiling!_

Of course the big way Mr. Holmes came through for me of late was after that raid where I got stabbed with a poisoned syringe. Whole thing was obviously a set-up but the doctors said I was a goner until he somehow wangled the antidote from somewhere and saved me. Then he kept the vultures of the Met off my back while I recovered; nearly dying was no excuse for not working, one of them said! Mr. Holmes even had his friend Doctor Watson bring round cake for me, which I told Gally was decent of him.

My soon to be ex-son had coughed heavily, the sarcastic bastard!

Mr. Holmes also used his connections to get Herry‡ that job on the railways that he'd always been after, and something the boy told me about his work stuck in my mind as relevant to my friend. I would've been no detective had I not seen these two gentlemen had something rather more than just friendship, and I knew the detective had been angered more than once by newspapers who had written of the doctor as 'a cipher'. Herry once compared the doctor to one of those small brass safety valves on the top of railway locomotives. Small and unnoticed against the gleaming engine perhaps, but without it the whole thing runs the risk of exploding as he said quite a few engines did in the early days of steam. That I think was the role that Doctor Watson played to his 'friend'; keeping him grounded and reminding him that humanity had a righteous side to it. Otherwise he might've ended up like Inspector Macdonald had been before.... you know,

At this time in their lives together – not that they were as Val always insists on saying, 'together together' – the two gentlemen were facing a rising threat, one which would eventually come close to destroying the great detective. One did not work amongst criminals without knowing when something big was going down and that was what I felt around this time. 

I was to be proven all too right – but I was sure that I would be able to play my part in helping them. There might even be cake!

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_Notes:_  
_† His fourth son Galleron LeStrade, born 1870 and twin to Iseult. He had just started out as a constable._  
_‡ His third son Gaheris LeStrade, born 1868. Sherlock had secured him a job as a brakesman on the Great Northern Railway._

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	3. Case 165: The Adventure Of The New Girl ☼

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1890\. Mrs. Violet Hudson has to cope with not just her famous bacon-mad tenant but also the wide span of humanity that comes through the door of 221B to see him. Hence she is more alert than many in her position to anything out of the usual – which is good, as this will not be the last time that she needs to be on her guard.

_[Narration by Mrs. Violet Hudson]_

I do not feel at all sure that I am up to this, but dear Doctor Watson insisted that as this was very much my story or at least that of one of my staff, I should tell it myself. When I handed him my few scribblings I very much expected to see the sort of polite face that dear Jo pulls when she sees cabbage on her plate before faking how happy she is (frankly I have seen politicians do better!), but he confessed himself delighted with my humble efforts and to my surprise he added them to Mr. Holmes's private records just as I had written them. He did say that the story could not be published yet which given the circumstances I quite understood, but one day I may be in print!

I knew of course that Mr. Holmes was very busy just now dealing with a Major Criminal who was defying all efforts to bring him to justice so I was on the alert even more than usual; more than one unwelcome visitor to 221B had departed with gunshot in their rear when they had failed to take a hint. At the start of that year I had what had seemed like a minor distraction when dear Maggie had to leave my service because her father had been taken ill. It had been was particularly vexing because it was very hard to get good servants just them and I was even more annoyed when, having invited in three girls as possible replacements, two did not even have the courtesy to turn up for their interviews. Girls these days! Fortunately the third one, Sally, seemed satisfactory so I took her on trial for a month to see if she was 'up to snuff'.

Sally _seemed_ all right, but for some reason I did not quite feel easy with her. It was like with my poor Bill; he was always terrible at hiding things and I just knew that this girl had some sort of secret that she did not want me to find out. Of course most people have, but given what Mr. Holmes was going through just then I did not want anyone dealing with him who might be a distraction. I had had more than one person try to get rooms here because they had thought that being near to the sweet man would make him more likely to take their cases, only to discover that he knew the word 'no' and also that I knew the phrase 'non-refundable deposit'!

It was easy with Sally that first week as she was assigned to the two ground floor rooms, Rooms One and Two. However at the end of that week Betty, who then did the second floor which was just Mr. Holmes and the good doctor, came to me and said that Sally had asked if she could see the great man and might they swap when I was out one day. I was suspicious at once and told her she had been quite right to come to me; also that I would be very angry if my Arrangements were upset like that. 

I probably should have acted there and then, but the situation seemed in hand so I did not. However at the start of the second week we had a visitor, a Mr. David Primrose. He it turned out was the beau of Sally come to take her out for her half-day; like her he was about thirty years of age and for some reason I took against him immediately. I do not know why; he was polite enough and did not keep her out unduly late, but you develop a good sense for people in my job and I did not trust him one little bit.

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The day after Mr. Primrose's visit, there was trouble. I had been out for a walk and to post an important letter, and on my return I was surprised to find Jo doing some ironing. She was normally very good with doing her chores in the order I set them out so this was not what I had expected her to be doing.

“I thought that you were going to clean out the top-floor airing-cupboard”, I said.

“Sally said that she had done all her chores”, she said airily, “and would do it for me.”

I was immediately very suspicious. That cupboard lay just around the corner from Mr. Holmes's and Doctor Watson's rooms, and yet again the new girl was being far too interested in my most important tenant. Of course many females (and quite a few males, I had noticed) were for the obvious reason that he was so utterly ado..... approachable, but I did not like it. I hurried upstairs and sent the girl out to the butcher's to buy some extra bacon (the one item that we were always running short of for some reason), then took over the job myself.

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One of Mr. Holmes's friends was a lady called Miss Clementine St. Leger, who worked at an information agency in the city. Shortly after this thing with the Major Criminal had started she had left me her card and told me to contact her at once if I felt that her friend was in the slightest degree of danger. I felt a little embarrassed in approaching her over something that seemed so trivial but I decided to go there that very day, having first told Jo to make sure that Sally kept to her tasks.

Swordland's Information Agency was in an impressive building neat the Angel, and after I had walked past what seemed like a sea of secretaries I was shown into the outer room to Mr. Swordland's office. It had a door to the owner's room that would have looked more in place in a castle wall the other side of a drawbridge, I thought, but my business here was with Miss St. Leger. She was young for such a prestigious post as chief secretary to Mr. Swordland but there was an aura of calm competence about her that was ageless. 

She listened to my concerns and nodded.

“This Mr. Primrose sounds like he is well worth investigating”, she said. “Thank you for coming and telling me about him and this maid of yours. One thing strikes me as odd; if you were that unsure about her then why did you employ her for even a trial period?”

“I am sure that you appreciate how difficult it is to get good staff today”, I said. “I was going to interview three girls for the post but two of them did not even bother to show up.”

For some reason she frowned at that.

“If this girl is the danger that I think she is, then they may have been paid off”, she said. “Something as simple as arranging other posts for her rivals and promising to inform you of their success, then not so doing because you might well have been suspicious over such a thing. An effective ruse; I have seen it before. But perhaps one that we can use to flush the guilty party out.”

She thought for a moment.

“I think that I can get the required information by this evening”, she said. “Tell me a little about Betty, the maid who currently does your second floor.”

“A bit of a dreamer”, I said, “and always with her head in a magazine any spare moment that she gets. Mr. Holmes thinks that she has a hearing problem because she puts cotton-wool in her ears when he plays the violin; he plays it very well most times but when he gets stressed the music is quite unbearable! To be fair Betty does work hard, though.”

“Even if she might advance a case to be paid danger-money for crossing Mr. Holmes's mess of a room at times”, she smiled. “You have the 'Strand' magazine, do you not?”

“Yes”, I said, wondering just where she as going with this.

“If it is what I think to be the case”, she said, “then we will have to do the following....”

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To be honest I did not like it much. But when I received her couriered letter – not a telegram; I noted – that evening which confirmed things, I decided that I had no other choice. Sometimes you had to take a risk to flush out the bad people.

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Two days later Betty came to me in even more than a dither than usual, which was saying something. She had won a prize in one of those competitions that she was always entering (and one that she did not even remember, which fact did not surprise me), a full meal at the famous Ritz Hotel for her and one other person. She had to take the prize this week or forfeit it, so I said that if she put in some extra work up to Thursday she could have all Friday off. You would have thought that I had promised the girl the moon and stars!

I pulled in the other staff and explained Betty's good fortune to them. It would mean a bit more work for them but they would get extra to make up for it, and they all needed money for various reasons so they were fine with it. Although I caught Sally looking rather thoughtful as she left.

 _I would be thoughtful too, girl_ , I thought as I watched her.

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Friday arrived and it seemed at first very much a normal day. It was Sally's half-day and I had said that she could still take it if all her work was done. Her last task was to take all the lunches up to all five rooms and bring back the empty trays, then she could be off. She had never taken meals to Mr. Holmes's room before; I had made sure of that.

Her beau Mr. Primrose arrived just as lunch was starting so I said that he could wait in the small waiting-room by the entrance to the kitchens. He was our second visitor that day; I had shown the earlier one up to Mr. Holmes's room earlier, a handsome young gentleman of possible Italian extraction, and he had not left as far as I knew. I then went back to my room and very firmly shut the door. Jo was out on an errand and I had paid for her to have lunch out provided that she did not come back before two; that also meant I could check those society magazines that she read to make sure that there was nothing inappropriate in them. I always remembered to place them back in the correct order so that she would not know.

Even through the closed door I heard it, a gunshot followed by the sound of a body hitting the floor two storeys above. I hurried out of my room then up the stairs, and as I drew near I could see the maid's uniform of the figure in the doorway of Room Five, its occupant very clearly dying as they bled out all over my nice clean carpet (thankfully I had got my special preparation boiling downstairs ready to remove it).

It was Mr. David Primrose.

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Mr. Holmes explained to me that his arch-enemy, one Professor Moriarty, had been trying to have him killed for some time now, and had decided to try to take advantage of my needing a new maid to insert into the house someone who could then try to kill me. Sally's 'beau' was in fact her brother and the two worked together, although as she had no experience with guns he had had to be the one to fire the bullet. They had taken advantage of this one chance to get at him, although Mr. Primrose had been unaware that the drunken lout who had bumped into him not far from my front door had in fact been an expert pickpocket who had exchanged his gun for one with blanks in. Mr. Holmes's guest had been Mr. Roderick West, who as it had happened was a knife-thrower in the circus (and he had looked such a nice young man!). His knife was in Mr. Primrose before his gun went off.

Of course there had to be a trial at which I had to give evidence, which was very unpleasant though mercifully brief. Sally had no real choice but to plead guilty and try to put the blame on her dead brother,; however the bank accounts showed that she had been in charge of the finances of the pair and twelve good men and true made sure that Mr. David Primrose did not have to spend long in Hell without his sister. Meanwhile I redoubled my guard and checked my own weapons.

I lived in interesting times.

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	4. Case 166: The Destruction Of Viper's Bay

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1890\. What starts out looking like a natural disaster ends with a body in the wrong place - a body of someone known to Sherlock and John. Mr. Randall Holmes is implicated (despite John's best hopes the body is not the lounge-lizard's), and not for the last time the nuisance goes that one step too far.....

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mentioned also as the case of Vipers.

_[Narration by Doctor John Watson, M.D.]_

Our next (published) case together would not take place for some little time. Before that however came my thirty-eighth birthday, which I marked most reluctantly. At least reluctantly to start with until Sherlock made it a day to remember. 

A few months prior, we had been browsing in Mr. Abrahams's jewellery shop on our way back to Baker Street when I observed that one of the items in the window looked very much like a ring that my late mother had once owned. Most of her jewellery I had given to Stevie but that one item I had kept, on a chain around my neck as it was too small for my fingers. I had told Sherlock that, in my carelessness, I had lost it somewhere on my rounds just after New Year's Day. He had expressed his condolences and nothing more had been said on the matter, for which I was grateful. The loss of that gewgaw was, if truth be told, still a little raw; it was about the only thing of my mother's that was really personal to me.

I really should have known better about my friend's reticence. He obtained a full list of all the places I had been that week and set Miss St. Leger to see if she could work her magic to track down the missing item. Sure enough it turned out that it had fallen off in the house of one of my less honest patients who had immediately pawned it, so she was able to find the pawn shop and retrieve it. So on my birthday he had presented me with the ring, which I recognized immediately as it had a tiny L-shaped nick on the left-hand side. I was only thankful that there was a box of tissues handy on the nearby table as the dust in the room was suddenly making my eyes water.

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It was early February now and I knew that my friend was straining every sinew in his efforts to draw a net around Professor Moriarty. Sometimes, he would whimper in his sleep and I would pull him as close as I could and whisper how much I loved him. I wished that I could have done more to help but I was only the whetstone upon which the sharp knife that was his brilliant mind needed the occasional sharpening. He was definitely more prone to want me close to him even during our waking hours and I noted that he seemed less inclined to take cases away from London. So I was surprised when, one cold February morning he mentioned that a case required us to make a return to Lincolnshire, where four months before we (he) had solved the case of the Boulevard Assassin.

“Which Part?” I yawned as I passed half my bacon to him as per usual. It must have been a bad morning because unusually I got a second piteous look, which promptly made me fork over the rest. Maybe his annoying brother Guilford had been right to send him that dog-collar after all!

“All of me”, he said looking confused. “I can hardly send my lower half on its own, John.”

I was about to clarify that I very obviously meant which of the three Parts of that county he had been summonsed to when I caught the slightest twitch of his lips. He was having me on the bastard!

“I have a good mind to take my bacon back!” I protested.

That earned me the terrible Quivering Lip as if I was the worst room-mate ever to be inflicted on some poor, helpless, woebegone consulting detective (hah!). I rolled my eyes and sat back; at least Mrs. Hudson, used to her genius lodger's ways, always made sure that I had some extra food on my plate to start with to make up for my regular morning charity handover.

“Lindsey”, he said in between crunching happily on his mountain of bacon. “Specifically, Viper's Bay.”

My eyes widened. Of course I had read in the paper the day before yesterday about how the small village of that name on the east coast had been all but wiped off the map by a terrible winter storm, but surely they were not expecting Sherlock to sort out Acts of God now?

“Sir Malory Thatcher who is coroner for the Holland Part of the county has written to me”, Sherlock explained. “He thinks that something is rather strange about one of the bodies found in the ruins of the village.”

That surprised me, as I had seen a map showing Viper's Bay in the article that I had read and I was sure that it had been some way into Lindsey and nowhere near the border with Holland.

“Surely that would have reached the newspapers?” I said dubiously. I did not like the press much, some of whom did not have the good taste of the 'Times' with its most excellent book reviews and had mocked my work as being 'fit only for the huddled masses', but I knew that keeping anything from them was difficult if not impossible. 

“That”, Sherlock said, “is one reason why it is so interesting. The other is that if it is indeed urgent, then why he did not send a telegram rather than a letter?”

He looked around the table for something, then at me.

 _“John”_ , he said in that piteous 'I am about to ask you to do something for me and you know that you are going to do whatever I ask' voice. I sighed.

“What is it?”

“The ketchup is over on the sideboard!”

I sighed again but got up and fetched him the red bottle. I was rewarded with a gummy smile and some happy crunching.

“Honestly”, I grumbled. “I might as well wear a maid's costume for all that I fetch and carry for you so much.”

“Better than the maid service round here of late”, he said pointedly.

He had a point. At least I was not passing off as servants' beaus who tried to kill him - _although if he smirked over all that bacon, that might bloody well change!_

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The following day we headed once more for the Great Northern Railway's station at King's Cross and a fast train to Peterborough. We then changed to a much slower one which ambled as we had done four months earlier to Boston and it was only a few stops before we reached Willoughby Junction, where we had to change again for the coast loop line. The town of Mablethorpe, which I suppose would have looked quite welcoming to its summer tourists, seemed both dismal and shut in February, and I wondered at our alighting there rather than closer to Viper's Bay – or what little was left of it – which I knew lay some seven or eight miles further up the coast. Saltfleetby Station further up the line was surely a few miles nearer the lost village.

“Sir Malory has arranged to meet us here”, Sherlock explained. 

“I thought you said that he was the coroner for Holland?” I asked. “Does he live out of his working area?”

“I wondered at that too”, he said. “His letter was written from an address in Boston but perhaps he chose here because it is nearer the scene of whatever happened, or he knows someone here. He was remarkably uninformative about his concerns, and that coupled with his disinclination to use the normally reliable telegraphic system concerns me.”

“You think that this is serious?” I asked. The destruction of virtually a whole village was I knew serious in itself, but Sherlock had that look about him that rarely ended in good things happening.

“Even though Lindsey and Holland are parts of the same county”, he said. “there is I am sure much the same sort of parochialism that we see between nearby police-stations in London, where they will not help and even sometimes hinder investigations that stray into 'their' patch. I know that the disaster led to people being pulled in from miles around so I think that we are dealing with the clean-up here. Or possibly a cover-up.”

I shuddered. The start of the year had been marked by a number of unwelcome visits from a certain lounge-lizard of Sherlock's who had as yet seemingly failed to grasp why his supercilious overbearing demanding attitude did not make everyone (including certain talented younger brothers) rush to help him whenever he demanded it. Yet despite that, 'someone' would still not allow me to install those man-traps!

And now he was shaking his head at me again! Harrumph!

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I also had some doubts about Sherlock's friend Sir Malory, especially when our cab pulled up outside a small place on the northern outskirts of the town and saw that it was called 'Boddy's Rest'! Fortunately the coroner, a fine old gentleman with silver hair and a pronounced limp, was able to explain matters.

“I was quite concerned over what had transpired”, he said, “and although I probably read too much detective fiction I decided to take the precaution of meeting you here at my sister's house. I am sure that you as I did groaned when you first saw the name of this place; it was built some years back by a local writer, a Mr. Enford Boddy.”

“Writers these days!” cut in someone who was sleeping alone that night. I huffed indignantly and they both laughed.

“I was going to write to you anyway, Mr. Holmes”, the coroner said, “even before recent events. But.... it is better if I take you to the town where we have the body, then perhaps your doctor friend might take a look at him.”

“Only one body?” I asked, surprised. “I thought that most of the village had lost their lives?”

“That is the problem”, the coroner sighed. “I do not think that this man was a villager – his clothes are far too high a quality for a place such as Viper's Bay, for one thing - yet I have no idea what he was doing there!”

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“The deceased was a blond, middle-aged gentleman in good physical condition”, the coroner said as I donned protective clothing prior to the examination. “He may have had an occupation that was mostly sedentary as there were signs that he spent long periods at a desk, but I cannot be sure of that because he had no identification on him, none at all. There were however no suspicious marks and it seemed as if he had been caught in the storm and been killed when the house he was in collapsed under the deluge, like the rest of the poor souls there. But as I said he just did not 'fit in', and I did not like it.”

“I wrote to you yesterday after events took a new and arguably worrisome turn. That was just after I had overheard my deputy talking to someone in a small side-office at my work. I had just left and had had to come back for my umbrella as it was threatening rain, so they did not know that I was listening in.”

Sherlock looked at him sharply. I was surprised; his last statement had seemed fair enough. But the man then blushed even more.

“I could not of course see who he was talking to”, he said. “The room has only one small slatted window high up. But my colleague did address him by name the one time.”

“And?” Sherlock said. The coroner gulped.

“He said, 'yes. Mr. Holmes sir'. I did not see him leave, I am afraid, but Geoff at the railway-station told me that a fellow answering that description had come up from London. Tall, blond, and looked down his nose at him 'like that Marie Antoinette', he said.”

We both stared at him in shock.

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The surprises of that day were far from over. I thought to myself as Sherlock and I entered the cold room where the body of the victim had been stored that it was almost certainly Mr. Randall Holmes that the coroner's deputy had been talking to – but then why would the lounge-lizard be interested in a seemingly accidental death in a storm in distant Lincolnshire, especially as I knew that he almost never left the capital? Unless the death was not that accidental?

I pulled back the sheet covering the body, then nearly dropped it. Sherlock of course looked totally calm although surely he must have been as shocked as I was. Hopefully surely.

“Sergeant Adam Bartholomew”, he said quietly. “Well well. What are _you_ doing all the way up here?”

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Indeed. What on earth was the awful London policeman whom we had met some two years back in the case concerning Sherlock's tutor Mr. Inglis Atkinson doing so far from his city station? Just happening to be visiting a village as it got wiped off the face of the map? It was some way beyond incredible!

I completed my examination, and did not like what I found. Sherlock stood by me in silence and afterwards we rejoined Sir Malory who drove us back to the cottage.

“What do you think?” Sir Malory asked me.

“The signs are consistent with someone who drowned, having been inside a building that was overwhelmed by water”, I said carefully. 

“But there was something else, was there not?” Sherlock asked softly. I nodded.

“He had been poisoned beforehand”, I said. “The signs were almost undetectable but I have seen that particular poison before. I think that if you tested samples of his hair, they would show that his body was trying to expel the poison that way. The traces would be very slight, but a second and more definite sign is that this poison turns the finger-nails a blue-grey colour with yellow flecks.”

“I did wonder”, Sir Malory said, “though I myself have little experience of such things.”

I cannot of course name the poison involved, nor the (undocumented) case in which I had come across it, but I will say that it was a very rare poison indeed, the sort of thing that only the very rich or powerful could have gotten hold of. Or, as I did not have to be any sort of a detective to know that Sherlock was thinking just then, 'someone' in government. 

My friend turned to our host.

“Some time in the next day or so, someone claiming to be the dead man's wife or some other relative will appear to identify him”, he said. “They will give a false name and will request immediate possession of the body. I am quite surprised that they have not come already.”

“You think that the body should not be handed over?” Sir Malory asked.

“You are not the coroner for this county”, Sherlock pointed out. “I am sure that whoever that unfortunate person is, they have already been 'advised' to brook no such delay and quite possibly even been threatened as to what might happen to them and/or their loved ones should they decline such counsel. Tell us about Viper's Bay, please.”

The coroner sighed.

“It is a sad tale”, he said. “As you know the new German Kaiser William, despite being our dear Queen's grandson, is very militaristic and I share the opinion of many that we shall soon find ourselves in some sort of 'arms race' against him. I say that because just days after his accession, the government announced that they wanted to greatly improve the coastal defences of Kingston-upon-Hull just up the coast.”

I nodded. The east coast of Yorkshire, on which that great port stood, was renowned for advancing or retreating with surprising rapidity over time; Ravenspur, which had seen invasions by the future Henry IV in 1399 and a returning Edward IV in 1471, had been built east of Hull when the land there had built up but was now underwater again. Indeed one of our later cases (Shoscombe Old Hall) would be partly based on that same fast-changing coast.

“Viper's Bay is the only place for quite a few miles in either direction along the coast”, Sir Malory said. “Because there were so few people left – in recent years it was around twenty – the government decided to extract lots of stone from the beach there and take it to improve Hull. There were of course the usual assurances that such a practice was completely safe and that the village would be fine.”

 _Assurances† that were probably about as reliable as an umbrella made out of tissue-paper_ , I thought acidly. Sherlock nodded at me for some reason.

“Last week as you know we had that terrible storm”, the coroner said. “Four days of constant gales, and when they finally subsided the village was all but gone. A single cottage that had stood apart up on higher ground had survived but those on the path down to the beach were smashed to pieces. Your man, we found in one of those.”

“Why was he not kept with the other victims?” I wondered.

“That was one of the other things that worried me”, the coroner said. “In all the confusion of sorting out the mess after the storm, I thought at first that it would have been easy to miss the one body. Because some bodies went to Louth and others to Cleethorpes, there was a deal of confusion as we pulled together a list of all the dead. When they found an extra body after the teams from those two towns had gone for the day I suggested the room at the back of the station here, which I had used for my work once in a case close to the border and knew was always cold.”

“This man was murdered.”

We both looked at Sherlock in surprise.

“How can you be sure?” Sir Malory asked. “Might he not have taken his own life?” 

“A London policeman turns up in dead in Lincolnshire, and my lounge-lizard of a brother actually leaves his beloved city?” Sherlock said dryly. “Randall is tied even more firmly to our capital that I myself. _Why_ was he murdered, that is the question? If he was killed elsewhere, why....”

He trailed off, seemingly lost in his thoughts. I watched him anxiously but thankfully he seemed to re-engage with the rest of us soon enough.

“Thank you for inviting us in on this case, Sir Malory”, he said. “John, I think a few days of Lincolnshire sea air will do us the world of good. We shall find a hotel in this town and await developments.”

I wondered at spending time in a place like this so far out of season when the only things to look at were a grey sea and a greyer sky, but I said nothing. I was sure that Sherlock had his reasons.

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“This must be something bad”, I ventured once we had safely booked into the Grand Hotel (a name that it did not really live up to) in the town. He nodded.

“I am thinking that it has something to do with the Pink Map”, he said.

I looked at him in confusion.

“You mean like a map of the Empire?” I asked. He shook his head.

“It has to be serious because I know that it has been causing Randall concern, and yet it was the one thing that he did not mention it when he kept calling round last month. Luckily I met Carl at the gymnasium and he told me about it, as well as the fact that it was giving Randall palpitations. It is all to do with Africa.”

I thought back to my own time in the Dark Continent. I had been there for some three years and, incredibly, had only returned some four years back. Yet it seemed a lifetime away.

“I thought that the Berlin Conference had settled that”, I said. “Or at least I hoped that it had.”

“The loss, however temporary, of the Sudan has emboldened other nations to test Britannia”, Sherlock said. “The Portuguese as you know have possessions some way either side of our Cape Colony, on the east and west coasts. The Berlin Conference tentatively awarded them the lands between but after the Boer War the British have been pushing northwards again in anticipation of a renewal of troubles there, much to Lisbon's annoyance.”

_(For readers of later generations I should explain here that there were in fact two Boer Wars, one in 1880-1881 which the British effectively lost, and the second and much more famous later one in 1899-1902 which they won. Public opinion at home on both occasions was that Britannia was definitely in the wrong, and Berlin's open support for our enemies had further soured Anglo-German relations. Both wars had been prompted partly by fears that the two small but rich Boer republics might combine and seek an outlet to the sea, which would have made them a a considerable regional power, and the most likely egress would have been through southern Portuguese East Africa)._

“I would have thought that the government would not want the expense of such an area”, I said. I liked the idea of a red map denoting the British Empire and spreading the benefits of our culture, but I felt that some possessions were more trouble than they were worth, and places like the Sudan and Afghanistan should just be sealed off and left to their own devices or to some other Imperial Power. The whole point of an empire was that it should pay for itself if not turn a profit, not be a drain on the mother country.

“It is what I said about governments being like children”, Sherlock sighed. “Them not having something is one thing, but someone else actually having it – no no no, that is _quite_ unacceptable!”

I smiled at his 'school-ma'am' tone.

“A while back the Portuguese published something that has become known as 'the Pink Map'”, he explained. “It physically linked their eastern and western possessions around the top of the Cape Colony, thus cutting it off. There are fears that the Portuguese might be amenable to a treaty with the Boer republics to grant them their much-desired sea-access. The whole thing has gone down very badly in London.”

“But how does that explain a dead London sergeant being up here?” I asked.

“That is what Randall will tell us once he realizes that I am staying in the area”, Sherlock said simply. “Hopefully.”

“What if he does not?” I asked.

Sherlock smiled strangely.

_“Then he may not live to regret it!”_

I stared at him in confusion.

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Fortunately the weather improved slightly over the next few days, or at least it stopped raining. Walking along the sea-front however was I quickly discovered inadvisable as the area possessed what they call a 'lazy wind' – one too lazy to blow around you so it blows through you. 'Someone' of course remained as much of an inhuman heater as always and I was even prepared to forgive what was more than a borderline smirk when, on returning to our rooms, I immediately wanted to hold him in my arms. 

What? It was winter and I was damn cold!

By the weekend I was beginning to wonder if Sherlock had misread his brother for once. However, he told me on Saturday that the lounge-lizard would be meeting us in the hotel dining-room and no, I was not allowed to bring my gun no matter how much I pouted (it was a scowl, damnation!). Sherlock had also been right about the body being claimed; barely hours after our arrival a 'Mrs. Burrows' from Cleethorpes had identified the body as her missing husband Edward and it had been handed over to her at once (Sir Malory confirmed to us that his fellow coroner had indeed been threatened not to delay). Much as I had disliked the sergeant in life I hoped that at least the government would grant him a decent burial somewhere.

The Grand Hotel's dining-area – I do not wish to be uncharitable but I think that the designer had had one too many holidays out East and had returned determined to create his very own Turkish delight. Or horror. Somehow the garish colours, decorated screens and whatever the weird thing that was hanging from the lights did not sit well when one was having a fish-and-chips supper!

For some reason Sherlock asked me to come down to dinner five minutes after him which made me wonder if he was preparing some little surprise for his annoying brother (all right, I _did_ think of those man-traps!). But when I arrived into that dreadful room there was no sign of anything although I noted that Sherlock had secured the one table set a little apart from the others, near to a decorated screen that I tried hard not to look at as I valued both my sight and my sanity - seriously, it was not far short of the horror that was the outside of Mr. Harley Quinton's house! My friend did not order as he told me that our unwelcome visitor would be there any minute. 

Unfortunately he was as ever right. Mr. Randall Holmes arrived looked as irritating as ever and he glared at both of us before taking a seat and waving away a waiter. He sipped his glass of water and stayed silent.

“You are here to explain about Sergeant Bartholomew”, Sherlock said after a while (I hoped silently that the explanation would be a quick one as I was hungry). The lounge-lizard scowled even more.

“I do not have to tell _you_ anything, Sher”, he said sharply. “Or your 'friend' here.”

It was going to be one of Those Meetings, apparently. I waited and wondered how long even the urbane lounge-lizard would last under that azure stare. An impressive twenty-one seconds was the answer.

“He investigated something that he had no right to stick his nose into”, Mr. Randall Holmes said crossly. “Before you ask, Sher, I have no idea who it was who ended his life. My job is clearing up messes, not making them.”

That was the second time that he had used Sherlock's nickname which he knew full well that he did not like, and the narrowed eyes that his younger brother was giving him were not apparently getting the message across that someone was doing a Lithuanian rain-dance in a minefield. I felt optimistic that the odds on blood being spilled were shortening. Still, a town this size probably had a doctor somewhere or other. I might even go and look for one if asked nicely. After dinner, of course.

“He had no family”, the pest said, “and when we heard of this disaster I had the idea to hide the body here. It should have been reckoned another drowning, and would have done had you not stuck your nose in.”

I kept silent at that. I did not wish to drop poor Sir Malory in it.

“But it was the government who helped cause the calamity that killed twenty innocent people”, Sherlock said dryly. “You knew that taking that stone would lead Viper's Bay village to ruin, yet you ignored that risk. Many innocent people died.”

“One cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs”, his brother sniffed (I so hated that phrase!). “You have bent if not broken the law yourself on several occasions.”

“Only in the pursuit of justice”, Sherlock said. “You knew about the risk to those villagers yet you still went ahead and took their stone.”

“The report said that there was no risk”, his brother said haughtily.

What happened next was arguably the second-best moment of my time in this baleful man's presence. Sherlock reached down and lifted a large document onto the table, then stared hard at his brother who had gone deathly pale.

“You mean the _original_ report?” Sherlock said silkily. “The one that states, and I quote, 'sooner rather than later the undefended village will be destroyed by a storm'?”

“Where did you get that?” his brother demanded angrily. “Even I do not have a copy of the original; I made damn sure that all they were all destroyed.”

“The government will find the person responsible for this and sack them”, Sherlock said. “It will also compensate the families of all those who died in this disaster.”

“Her Majesty's Government is not to be ordered about by the likes of you and your doctor 'friend'!” his brother snapped. “Tread carefully, Sher. I am not the only person in a position of authority who thinks that your removal might make life a hell of a lot easier for just about everyone!”

I gaped. Had he just.....

“Did you just threaten me, Randall?” Sherlock asked. 

I stared at my friend incredulously. I was fighting for composure yet he sounded like he was discussing what to have with his fifth afternoon coffee! 

“Consider it a fraternal warning”, the lounge-lizard said coldly. “You are more trouble than you are worth lately. Those who think that you would be better off removed might not be so wrong after all.”

I was still reeling but Sherlock seemed strangely calm. He shook his head at his brother.

“You have done many foolish things in your life, Randall”, he said softly. “But I rather think that this is the last one you will manage for some considerable time.”

“Oh yes?” his brother sneered. “And what are you going to do to stop me, Sher? Run and tell mummy?”

Sherlock grinned and rose to his feet. And what happened next constitutes the answer to what I know is the question on many readers' minds just now – what was the _best_ moment in my time with the lounge-lizard? That happened the precise instant when Sherlock stepped over to the screen and said his next three words:

“Yes! _Oh Mo-ther?”_

What I would not have given for a camera to capture the lounge-lizard's face which had gone a shade of white I had hitherto thought impossible. For charging round the garish screen came none other than Lady Aelfrida Holmes and the look on her face..... a horde of Zulu warriors would have fled in panic!

 _“RAN-DALL!!!!!”_ she bellowed. They must have heard her down in Lincoln.

“Come on!” Sherlock hissed dragging me to the door. 

Part of me wanted to stay here and watch the blood being spilled, but my sense of self-preservation (coupled with a large dose of absolute terror; how had she acquired a walking-stick that size?) was infinitely stronger. I stumbled after him.

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“It was very good of Mother to pay for Randall to be transferred back to London, was it not?”

It was full three days later and I was still laughing. Lady Holmes had been Absolutely Bloody Furious (a Level Ten) at her fourth son for, in her hearing, threatening the life of her youngest boy. The lounge-lizard had had to spend two days in the town hospital before he could be moved – I had always wondered at the practicality of those 'knobbly' walking sticks but after this I wondered no more – and my least-favourite Holmes would be off work for at least a month. Never mind spending money on all the latest weapons; we should just send Sherlock's mother to the front line and any enemy with sense would surrender forthwith!

“And your mother was certainly pleased to see you as well”, I grinned. “Sherry-werry-werry-werry-werry'!”

He blushed fiercely.

“He will not try anything like that again any time soon”, he said firmly. 

He would not – well, sort of not as things turned out; it was the lounge-lizard, after all. Still, anyone who thinks that governments are slow-moving should know that, when pursued by an irate Lady Aelfrida Holmes the standard snail's pace suddenly becomes that of an express train accelerating downhill with a gale force tailwind. The killer of Sergeant Bartholomew was found on the same day as her return to the capital, a Mr. Anthony Sedgefield who fled the country before he could be brought to trial, although somehow he contrived to fall over the side of the Calais ferry (Sherlock's friend the assassin Mrs. Kyndley whom he paid extra as, like me, she was not fond of the sea). I was surprised that the Marquess of Salisbury had not barricaded Downing Street against Sherlock's mother and I later learned that an ill-advised remark from her eldest son Mycroft on the matter had led to his being slapped and then banned from her house for a month, the first part of which he had to spending having his jaw reset. And Mr. Randall Holmes was not re-admitted to her good graces until he had written a fulsome letter of apology to us both. From his hospital bed.

Sherlock had it framed. I laughed every time I saw it.

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_Notes:_   
_† Viper's Bay is, sadly, based on a real village, Hallsands in Devonshire. The government licensed dredging there around the time of this story to defend the nearby harbour at Plymouth and the lowered beach meant that the old village got swept away in a storm (1917). It took seven years for the villagers, some of whom moved to a new Hallsands further north, to get compensation and even today the site of the old village is too dangerous to allow visitors, although there is a viewing platform where one can marvel at the solidity of 'government assurances'._

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	5. Case 167: The Adventure Of The Slain Knight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1890\. Sherlock and John find themselves facing yet another government conspiracy/cock-up. And another face from the past provides a case in which a seemingly motiveless killing turns out to be anything but.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mentioned also as the Abbas Parva or Ronder Circus killing.

_[Narration by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire]_

John and I returned from our second visit to Lincolnshire both in a very good mood, which may or may not have been due to the fact that my brother Randall was in hospital recovering from a sudden attack of stupidity in which he had threatened my life. In the hearing of Mother! I am only surprised that, given their abjectly poor track record when it came to respecting human lives, the government did not decide to rid itself of him in order to placate my still livid mother (all right I admit it; I may just have hoped for that!), especially as she had cornered the prime minister at a ball the night before and flattened two of his security detail before very publicly telling him exactly what she thought of him. One of those rare instances that even the mighty 'Times' newspaper had had to use discretion in a headline; knowing Mother as I did, I seriously doubted that she had actually said that if there were any further actions against her youngest son then she would 'grab the premier hard by St. Paul's!' For once I would not tease the man I loved about his interest in those social pages, as the newspaper was little else today after that sort of incident!

Sadly my next case was yet another concerning governmental stupidity and malfeasance, and this time a case which ended in more than one death. Indeed, it ended with two bodies in two lakes many miles apart from each other. But at least someone learned a useful – if final - lesson at the end of it.

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John's readers will remember the terrible scandal at the Tankerville Club where a number of black gentlemen had been extracted from the East End solely so that certain depraved club members might 'enjoy' torturing them. Among those freed that day was the wonderful Benji, my cousin Luke's lover/tormentor who as well as being one of the horniest men in London Town managed to hold down his main job as a fruiterer as well as posing for his art-classes, wearing a smile and little else. The owner of the shop where he worked had also obtained him a small job helping out at a gymnasium owned by his nephew which had led to Benji developing an amazing physique to rival that of his friend Jet, and of neither man was John was the least bit jealous, especially when he had seen them dressed as savages in our recent 'cooking class'. Or when he treated them from time to time. No, not at all jealous. No way.

He is glaring at me for some reason.

It was Benji's 'art work' – the bad boy always remarked to me how much he got paid for just standing around without any clothes on, which remark always seemed to coincide with John coughing for no apparent reason - that was the reason for his visit and our next case, which like far too many was the focus of intense press speculation for a few days and then vanished from the newspapers to be replaced by some other focus of fascination. Not I quickly ascertained that our new client had wanted to seek our assistance but for such a huge muscular fellow Benji could really look like the most put-upon fellow in existence (something that Luke complained about to me several times always followed by my threatening physical harm if he gave any more details!) and few could resist that doleful expression when he turned it on them. 

I mentioned that look to John over breakfast one time, and for some reason he just shook his head at me as he passed over half his bacon. 

Benji arrived that first day wearing the overalls of his fruiterer's job which meant that he was headed off to work there. With him was a short young fellow with dark hair and a round face, half the bigger man's bulk and clearly trying to hide behind him (which was quite easy). I greeted my friend – I did not smirk at a certain person moving behind a table or pouting as he did when he did not get his way (or his chocolate) – and bade them both sit down.

“This is Eddie Bennet”, Benji said, “who works at the art college. He sorts out all the things for lectures and displays; he pretty much runs the place despite all those stuck-up profs who think they're in charge.”

The shorter man blushed at the praise. 

“Ben is very kind”, he said. He had a quiet voice that matched his appearance. “He helped me clear up one day when a lecture overran and I had to get in a lot of things for the one after, otherwise I would not have managed it. Some of the professors can be very demanding.”

“And now he's in trouble, sir”, Benji said.

“Why is that?” I asked.

“It's the Abbas Parva murder, sir.”

I baulked at that name. The strange death of Mr. Michael Knight in the Berkshire village had divided opinion across the nation when it had hit the newspapers, the day we had left for Lincolnshire as it happened otherwise I myself might have paid it more attention. The nineteen-year-old had been found drowned in Walton Lake, not far south of the city of Oxford and barely a mile from the orphanage in Abbas Magna where he had lived. It had at first seemed like just a tragic accident, but as more information had emerged the case had taken on a rather more sinister tone.

Shortly before his death Mr. Knight had called on a friend in the village, who had been about to depart for a short trip to London, and on being questioned this gentleman's statement to the police contained something curious. He stated that the victim had been worried about something, and that he had talked about going to the police for some reason. The friend also thought it unlikely that Mr. Knight would have approached the local constable, given that he was less than enamoured of that person (although he may have phrased that sentiment rather more bluntly). 

Another odd thing that had emerged was that on leaving his friend Mr. Knight had headed off in the direction of the camp of the Ronder Circus which had then been based between the two Abbas villages. This was on the way back to his orphanage but in almost exactly the opposite direction from the lake in which he had been found, and although the coroner had expressed considerable doubt over the friend's evidence, the conspiracy theorists had naturally begun to speculate over the strangeness of the case. 

“Michael Knight was my first cousin”, Mr. Bennet said. “I grew up in Abbas Magna before coming to London so I know the area well. We were not close; there was a split between our respective parents and Michael's father was totally useless. When he died drunk in a ditch I was not in the least bit surprised.”

I winced at his unfortunate choice of words as I sensed John wince across the room. His own father had met just such an end I knew, and worse, he had been the one to find him there. Not that he had been at all surprised so to do; some men seemed destined to end their lives that way.

“I attended the last day of the inquest as I was visiting the area at the time”, Mr. Bennet said, frowning. “Something was.... not right.”

We all looked at him, but apparently that was it.

“Not right how?” John asked. 

“I have read some of your cases published in the 'Strand' magazine, sirs”, he said. “Something just did not make sense, but I did not like to say anything at the time because people would have thought I was stupid. Also.... it sounds silly, but I had an odd feeling that if I had spoken out then I myself might be in danger, although I had no reason for thinking that.”

“It is possible that something you saw registered on a subconscious level”, I said, “and warned you accordingly. What in the fairer sex is known as intuition; I have observed that sort of thing before. Was there anything that you did see that stuck in your mind?”

The young man thought for a moment.

“Michael was buried at the orphanage”, he said, “almost immediately the inquest was done. That in itself was not unusual; I doubt that his mother could have afforded a plot and she is too proud to ask for or accept help. It chanced that I had received a telegram from an uncle of mine who had been taken ill in London so I had to return to Paddington a day earlier than I had intended. Imagine my surprise when on the station platform I saw none other than the manager from the orphanage, Mr. Daniel Beckham.”

“Maybe he too had business in London?” I suggested.

“I thought that too”, Mr. Bennet said, “and I was half-inclined to think that I was making something out of nothing, although the fact that he travelled first-class also struck me as more than a bit odd. He did not dress like someone who used first-class, at least in my opinion. Fortunately he did not notice me and I was able to follow him when we reached Paddington. He was quite imperious for someone of his class; he summonsed a porter and told him to have a cab ready to take him to the government offices in Whitehall!”

I wondered if John would be writing the phrase _'déjà vu'_ any time soon. At least it could not be my obnoxious brother Randall this time as he was still recovering from Mother's recent Level Ten. Which reminded me, I needed to buy her an even more deadly walking-stick as she had broken the last one in her fury. A doubly reinforced one for when next he annoyed her or me; it could surely not be that far into the future. And yes, the thought that I could always lay something at Randall's door anyway had occurred to me – John was becoming a bad influence on me - but I was too good for that. 

Well, probably too good. 

We would see.

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I was about to ask Mr. Bennet some more questions when we heard a commotion in the street outside. I looked out of our window but could see nothing; however just moments later one large fruiterer returned dragging a clearly unwilling scruffy fellow with him. I scowled at the newcomer.

“Cranbrook!” I said, recognizing the pest. “What foul wind brings _you_ here?”

“Just passing, Mr. Holmes!” the man gasped, trying to free himself from the behemoth's implacable grip. He had no chance.

“This was the same fellow I saw when I came here”, Benji growled (for all his gentle nature he could as I had seen recently do the fierce savage act to perfection, even _sans_ loincloth and sword). “I remembered his cap. What's your game, cur?”

“This man is a professional watcher”, I said. “One of the better ones; you did very well to net him, Benji. Now the only question is as to which means of torture he would prefer to undergo; my own fairly amateur ones or the professional methods of some of my more interesting 'friends'. The sort who can make death seem a highly attractive option.”

The trapped man whined in terror.

“I am sure”, I told him, “that whoever sent you is capable of inflicting all sorts of punishments on you if you were so foolish to get caught as you have done. I have more than adequate contacts who can uncover the name of your employer, to whom I would of course imply that you had told me the same.”

The man somehow contrived to look even more frightened.

“I can take him with me”, Benji growled. “The boys at the molly-house are used to dealing with the odd client who can't mind his manners. I'm sure they can get it out of him – _one way or another!”_

“Perhaps that would be for the best”, I conceded. The trapped man shook his head violently.

“It was Mr. Bone!” he groaned. “He had stuff on me! I had no choice!”

I froze. John looked across at me uncertainly.

“Mr. Curzon Bone is one of those agents used by people to employ others to do their dirty work for them”, he said. “A middle-man. Fortunately it will be fairly easy to find out who is using the scoundrel's services. I shall ask around and will doubtless have the answer by this evening.”

“Let me go!” the trapped man pleaded.

“Not a chance!” Benji retorted. 

“Perhaps we should”, I smiled. “After all, we know he lives at Number Seven, Nighthawk Lane in Bermondsey, along with his wife and four children. Doubtless he is currently wondering if he should warn Mr. Bone so that his actual employer might be alerted. Such a move would be _most_ unwise, Cranbrook. Maybe even fatal!”

Benji suddenly dropped his captive onto the carpet, and he crumpled into an untidy heap.

“And now _I_ know where you live, cur!” the behemoth grinned. “If my good friend Mr. Holmes here is inconvenienced at all because you were a tattling little tattle-tale, then you'd better keep a sharp eye over your shoulder for the rest of your wretched life - 'cause it may not be that long! You never know when me and the boys might loom up out of the dark, black night. _Boo!”_

The man screamed and scrabbled for the door, and we could hear him almost falling down the stairs. I sighed.

“I shall have to ask Miss St. Leger for a favour”, I said. “Possibly two, because I have an uneasy feeling that this will be a most difficult case.”

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John and I met Miss St. Leger at the bakery near Swordland's as the company was having the place painted and professionally cleaned. At least that was her excuse. Fortunately the place did chocolate slices so John was happy.

“Yes, I did wonder about Abbas Parva”, she said, reaching for one of three jam cream fingers on our cake-stand (evidently she was a regular customer here). “Certain things did not quite add up but as it was not my concern I let it go; I am more than busy enough as it is. You are here to inquire as to who employed a professional follower through the offices of Mr. Curzon Bone to track your visitor earlier today?”

Somehow I was not surprised in the least that _she_ knew. I nodded.

“I very much fear that this will be another governmental case”, he said. “Am I correct?”

She nodded.

“The Marquess of Salisbury is having kittens!” she grinned as she passed over a slim folder. “His doctor had to give him something for his nerves when they broke the news to the poor old fellow. As you can see from the dates, this all began before that oily oik of a lounge-lizard decided to see if he could get both feet in his mouth at one and the same time, and now there is a second case that has drawn your attention. The prime minister is desperate for you to drop it, but knows that any move against you would bring down the ire of the whole Monstruous Regiment of your mother and her friends – or as both her husband and the doctor here likes to call them, the Coven.

John, who had very obviously been about to make some snarky comment there, blushed and went back to his chocolate slice. The pout was as adorable as ever, though.

“The prime minister promised your brother Guilford a year's supply of sweets if he could sidetrack you in this case”, she said. “A stupid move on his part to have accepted.”

“Why?” John asked.

“Because our esteemed premier was prepared to go up to five years!” she grinned. “The marginally less unpleasant Holmes went round to Mr. Bone at eight twenty-five this morning, which proves that miracles do happen. You might care to tell him that gold shirts are vulgar even by his standards; my watcher said she felt that she deserved extra pay for having seen _that_ just after breakfast!”

I smiled at that.

“What I am looking for”, I said, “is an unexplained death in London.”

John snorted at that, and given my choice of words I could hardly blame him. Miss St. Leger chuckled and reached for the second jam cream finger.

“It is my belief”, I said, “that Mr. Michael Knight was killed not for anything that he did or did not do. He was killed because of his physical resemblance to someone whose death was deemed Important. That death would likely have to have taken place only days before his own, given that there had to be a _post mortem_.”

Miss St. Leger nodded.

“It should be easy to locate the man”, she said. “You do know that your brother will not be happy?”

“What will he do?” John snipped. “Start wearing polka-dots?”

I shook my head at him and did not smile as I called over the waitress for more chocolate slices. And more jam cream fingers.

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My few precognitive abilities must have been waning because I did not get the expected visit from my brother until the next day. It was early afternoon – Guilford rarely did mornings which in itself showed the urgency of his visit to Mr. Bone - when there was the sound of angry yelling from the stairs leading up to our rooms. Soon after my brother burst into the room unannounced, rubbing his head.

“Your landlady hit me!” he said accusingly. I sighed.

“Do not worry”, he said. “I shall go down later to see if she is all right.”

“ _She_ hit _me!”_ Guilford protested. “With a silver tray!” 

I shook my head and tutted.

“That was unwise on her part”, I said. “Silver damages so easily. Still, I am sure that she will send you the repair bill. I shall give her your address if she needs it, and Mother can make sure that you pay up.”

John may not have exactly helped the situation by failing to stifle a laugh at this point. Guilford glared at me then seated himself without being asked.

“What do you know?” he demanded.

“Well, let me see”, I said thoughtfully. “I can give you any number of chemical formulae, a list of criminals whose careers I have successfully ended, which stories I have allowed to be published and which ones I...”

“Sherlock, damnation!”

“Or I could begin listing the sixteen government scandals that I am aware of”, I smiled, “and which may well be being featured in certain prominent London newspapers tomorrow. Starting with the twice-married cabinet member who frequently asks his secretary to take down rather more than just notes!”

Guilford gasped in shock.

“You would not dare!” he said hotly.

I smiled sweetly at him.

“Why do you think I visited the American Embassy today?” I asked. “I am sure that they in particular would be far from pleased if they knew who was really behind the collapse of the Arrowstock Logging Corporation last month, and all those jobs lost in northern New England as a result.”

“That is treachery!” Guilford stormed.

“I rather think that that is _politics”_ , I said calmly. “In that dirtiest of dirty world every man has his price. Would you like to hear mine?”

He glared at me but then slumped back into his chair. 

“Go on”, he said sullenly. 

“You will tell us about the murder of Constable Joseph Pilkington”, I said levelly, enjoying the shocked look on his face at that name. “John will take notes” - I saw my brother opening his mouth and shot him a look - “to which you will _not_ object. We shall then proceed from there.”

He glared at me, but he knew that he had lost. 

“A Mr. Paine Sutton”, he said at last. “One of the officials assigned to royal duty; his brother-in-law is Lord Hardman in the Lords. He works in Randall's department though not under him. Pilkington got suspicious that Sutton was committing fraud – he was - and the idiot was dumb enough to push the matter. So Sutton had him killed.”

I could feel the shock emanating from John at this casual disregard for a man's life. I really wished that I had been surprised too, but then this was Randall's department. Human life was a mere inconvenience in securing 'the greater good'.

“Was this Mr. Sutton behind the cover-up as well?” I asked. “Remember brother, I will _know_ if you lie to me. I may even tell Mother – most likely just after she has completed her current Gothic nightmare, 'Rocky's Horror Show', and is looking for someone to listen to the whole thing!”

I really should not have felt pleasure at seeing my own brother tremble. But then this was Guilford, so.

“He was”, he admitted, now deathly pale. “He came from Abbas Magna and had all the right connections there, including the fellow in charge of the orphanage. He found young Knight, they killed him and Pilkington, then they put the boy's personal effects on the body. Joseph Pilkington was laid to rest as Michael Knight.”

“But why did they do such a switch?” John asked.

“Because from the constable's body, it would have been obvious that he had been murdered”, I said. “Instead he was just quietly buried.”

My friend shook his head at the horror of it all. I could empathize. I turned back to my sullenly silent brother.

“I am sure that the coroner was also in on it from the unusual rapidity of his proceedings”, I said, “so I shall be having dealings with him ere long. I know that Mr. Knight is survived by only his mother. Did Constable Pilkington have any family?”

“Newly married with one child, a daughter”, Guilford said.

“You ruined their lives!” John cut in angrily..

“One cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs”, my brother said loftily (I was sure that John had written that one down already).

“I can”, I said coldly. “You will arrange an unexpected and large inheritance from an unknown cousin to Mrs. Knight, and a full police pension for Mrs. Pilkington. You will do this within twenty-four hours Guilford, or the American Embassy will be getting rather more than a passing visit. Kindly note that they will not be the only ones!”

“All right”, Guilford said sulkily. “Mr. Sutton?”

I smiled coldly, perhaps a little too pleased at the way it made him shudder.

“In Lincolnshire I showed a degree of clemency over the government's deciding to wade around in the blood of its own citizens”, I said. “I know that this latest foul-up began before Randall's vile acts, but I see now that such generosity was an error on my part. Clearly more _direct_ methods are called for in order to drive home the message to the likes of you and your employers. John will take a telegram to the post-office for me and you will not depart until his return. As a consequence of that telegram Mr. Sutton will not see this evening's sunset. As for you, brother..... I strongly suggest that once you leave, you absent yourself from us both for some considerable time.”

I penned a few lines and handed a piece of paper to John who left the room quickly. Guilford looked set to follow him but one look stopped him in his tracks, and he fell back into his chair scowling.

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The day after Guilford's visit, the 'Times' reported that the body of a government official called Mr. Paine Sutton had been dragged out of the ornamental lake outside his palatial Surrey home. He had been shot six times. I allowed myself a smile and arranged for a box of very expensive chocolates to be sent round to the assassin Mrs. Kyndley who had most generously taken time away from visiting her favourite nieces to 'directly remove' a blot on London's human landscape.

It is probably yet another damning indictment of both my own family and my own government that I had to check to see that Mrs. Knight and Mrs. Pilkington had indeed received their moneys (luckily for someone with a sweet tooth and poor dress sense, they both had). I made it clear to both my brothers that nothing short of a major emergency would permit their visiting Baker Street for some time. I did investigate the coroner but found that he had been threatened into compliance, so took no action against him. And Mrs. Hudson successfully billed Guilford for one damaged tray.

I may or may not have suggested to Mother that Randall being immobilised in a hospital bed was a perfect opportunity for him to help her with her stories, and that she could visit him and read them to him until he was better. I like to help speed a patient's recovery where possible. 

I have no idea why John is smiling like that.

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	6. Case 168: The Adventure Of The Copper Beeches

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1890\. Saving people, hunting criminals – except that this time, Sherlock is called in to help save a tree!

_[Narration by Doctor John Watson, M.D.]_

It was one of the great facets of Sherlock's character that he regarded all his clients and potential clients equally, even if that annoyed some who believed (always without the least justification) that they _obviously_ merited preferential treatment because of their higher status in society. Indeed, if anything the latter were less likely to get his help due to their arrogant attitudes. Thus there was nothing that surprising in his welcoming a somewhat unusual potential client to our rooms. 

Even if he was rather young.

“Thank you for agreeing to see me, Mr. Holmes”, the boy said politely. He was pale and blond, a smartly-dressed lad of average height, about thirteen years of age and wearing a grey grammar school uniform. “I know how busy you must be but I have something rather unusual to lay before you today.”

My opinion of our visitor rose a notch. Clearly he knew how to speak to his elders. Sherlock nodded.

“Pray introduce yourself and then state your case”, he said levelly.

“My name is Master Clarence Legant”, the boy said, “and I live in Gants Hill, in the county of Essex but on the edge of London. The village is named for my family which can trace its ancestry back to King Edward the First. I am my parents' third son and while both my elder brothers have an inclination towards our father's business world, I have always been of a more investigative turn of mind and have followed the doctor's writings of your adventures with great interest. I hope to become a policeman one day.”

Sherlock nodded. 

“So what brings you to us today?” he asked. The boy hesitated.

“I think it likely that our property will be broken into some time in the next few weeks”, he said. “Or at least our grounds will be, and in either case I fear that that the intruder will be both armed and dangerous.”

I raised my eyebrows in surprise but Sherlock seemed unperturbed.

“I presume that you have a reason for your hypothesis?” he asked politely. The boy nodded.

“My parents think it strange but I enjoy reading all the crime stories in the newspapers”, he explained. “Just over two weeks ago I was reading an article about a house called 'The Copper Beeches' in Surbiton, in the county of Surrey. My interest was piqued because that is also the name of my own house. It was a short article merely stating that someone had broken into the owner's garden and, for some reason, vandalized a copper beech tree by scoring great marks into it. The tree, the only one of its type despite the house name, lies in the centre of the house's main lawn but at this time of year such a thing would usually have gone unnoticed except for the fact that the house owner had chanced to order a swing installed for his grand-daughter and had wished for the tree to be examined beforehand by a tree surgeon. The writer put it down to an act of petty vandalism, but I find strange cases like that most interesting and wrote it in my notebook.”

“Go on”, Sherlock urged.

“Last week there was an almost identical incident at another 'Copper Beeches', this time in Dulwich”, the boy said. “This house had two large trees in its garden but only one was attacked. That seems strange to me unless perhaps the attacker was disturbed and fled, but there have been no further attacks there.”

“Why do you think that the intruder might be armed when they come to your house?” I asked. 

“In both cases so far a large tree has been badly damaged”, the boy said. “So the person doing it must have a sharp and powerful knife of some sort. That worries me, especially as the trees in our own garden are not so far from the house. If someone is prepared to enter a property's grounds with a knife, then there is the possibility that they may also bring a gun.”

“I think that you are right to be concerned”, Sherlock said to the boy's evident surprise. “Thank you for bringing this matter to our attention, sir. We shall take this case and if you write your address down for me we will make sure that you are kept fully informed of any developments.”

The boy looked almost disbelieving that Sherlock had been so easily won over but eagerly wrote down his details and handed them to me. Then he thanked us for our time and left. I looked at my friend thoughtfully.

“You think that there is more to this than just arboreal vandalism?” I said.

“I am concerned”, Sherlock said. “Let us consider the facts. Unless we assume that some madman has developed an impassioned hatred for houses of that name and/or the _fagus sylvatica purpurea_ – and if that, then why only one tree in the second case? - then there must be a motive for these attacks. The fact that they are spaced out suggests that the attacker is attempting to let any fuss die down lest someone spots a link between the attacks. It is his misfortune that an Essex schoolboy lived at a house with the same name as the ones he is targeting and was so alert as to spot his efforts.”

“You think that there will be more attacks?” I said.

“I am certain of it”, Sherlock said. “I also think that the boy was quite right; his house may be one of the targets although that depends on just how many houses share what is an unusual name. We know from his uniform that he attends Ilford Grammar School so we may presume that he has gone there after visiting us, having told them that he will be late for some reason. We shall take advantage of that fact and visit his house in Essex today as it is one of your days off.”

“My writing days”, I said, slightly annoyed. I sometimes thought that Sherlock believed I wrote of our adventures together with minimal effort, whereas the effort often made my head hurt and my hand ache. And whereas some stories seemed to flow quite easily, others took weeks of effort to get just right. 

My thoughts must have shown in my face for he came over and took me by the shoulders.

“I am sorry, my friend”, he said sincerely. “I know much effort you put into your writings and that I do not appreciate them as much as I should. I spoke before thinking.”

He looked at me earnestly, his blue eyes boring into me. How could I not forgive him when he looked at me like that?

“I shall go and get ready”, I said, a little gruffly. I would have made for my room but he looked so dejected that I had to say it. “Apology accepted”, I muttered.

It was worth swallowing my pride to see that small but real smile.

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The 'Copper Beeches' in Gants Hill was a large if not rambling place, set some way back from the main road. I could see no sign of the trees that gave it its name so I presumed that they were in the garden around the back.

Mrs. Alice Legant was not at all surprised that her son had come to see us. She was a pleasant and smartly-attired lady in her late thirties, welcoming us into her lounge and summoning refreshments.

“I thought that dear Clarrie was up to something”, she smiled. “He lives in his own world half the time, and when he said that he had to go into London before heading into school I did wonder. What is this all about, pray?”

The maid brought drinks and cakes and Sherlock waited until she had gone before speaking.

“Your son has laid a most unusual case before me, madam”, he said slowly. “I would not alarm you unnecessarily, but from the few facts that he has presented I believe that there may be some danger to you and your family.”

She turned pale.

“What sort of danger?” she asked.

“All will be well if you and your husband follow my instructions _precisely”_ , Sherlock said calmingly. “Somewhere in your garden it is possible that someone has hidden a secret message, or more likely part of a message. Someone associated with that person is determined to recover that message and to then destroy the evidence.”

“How can you know all this?” she asked.

“Without going into detail, someone left a message split between a number of houses that share the same name as your own”, Sherlock said. “The message was carved into one copper beech tree at each property. I do not yet know what form it takes but your son very cleverly spotted two attacks on houses with the same name as your own in and around the capital, and reasoned – correctly, I think - that his own house might well be in danger. The fact that even in a small way the first two attacks made the newspapers will I believe encourage our criminal to move fast. Thanks to your son's most excellent perspicacity we know that the villain is likely to strike at a number of houses that bear the name 'The Copper Beeches', quite possibly including this one as the name is not that common. I cannot of course be certain; as you can imagine it depends on just how many houses share this name, but we must not take even the slightest risk.”

“You think that we may be attacked?” she fretted.

“I am afraid that we must consider the possibility”, Sherlock said firmly. “We know that both attacks took place in the small hours of the morning, so it is of the greatest importance that whatever noise you or your family may hear from your garden of a night, you do not on any account go out to investigate. I do not know if the person making these attacks is prone to violence, but as your son correctly reasoned they must be possessed of a blade large enough to inflict severe damage on something as large and resilient as a copper beech tree, and where there is a knife there may also be a gun.”

“Indeed”, she said, “and thank you for coming to inform us. Dear Clarrie, and to think that Adam and Ben make fun of him!”

“When your husband comes home tonight you must explain things to him, and then make sure that everyone – family and servants – knows not to go outside at these times”, Sherlock said. “If it is acceptable to your good self the doctor and I would in the meantime like to take a look at the garden and see if we can find the message ourselves.”

“Of course”, she said, ringing the bell. “I shall have Audrey show you the way.”

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Half an hour later I had decided that if I never saw another copper beech tree in my life it would be too soon. The four specimens that gave the house its name were all about thirty feet tall, still yet to acquire their distinctive almost purple leaves this early in the season. I personally disliked this sort of thing even though so much of what the Victorian world considered 'natural' was in fact either man-made or had been artificially bred to look that way. Something that looked that unnatural should not be made to look that unnatural....

 _I_ knew what I meant!

Sherlock was up the third of the four trees – he had shimmied up each one - while I, barely two and a half years older and not yet forty for some considerable period of time, would not even have attempted such an ascent without a very solid ladder let alone my acrophobia. I was trying to wrap my coat even tighter around me when I heard an exclamation from above me.

“What is it?” I called up.

“Someone has carved three things into the back of the tree, facing away from the house”, he called down. “The letter 'A,' and the numbers 2 and 3.”

I heard some moving about for a few minutes then he suddenly appeared right next to me. I stared at him in astonishment. 

“Did you just jump?” I asked disbelievingly.

“It is safe provided you know how to land”, he said dusting himself down. “Come, let us make our farewells to Mrs. Legant and then hasten back to Baker Street. I wish to see if Luke has answered the telegram that I sent him before we left.”

“Should we not perhaps efface the symbols?” I asked. Sherlock shook his head.

“We do not wish to alert the criminal”, he said. “Once he has obtained the last two symbols including this one, only then can he secure his ultimate goal. With luck we will have him.”

“How do you know that he has only two more 'Copper Beeches' houses to visit?” I asked. “The message could surely be of any length.”

Sherlock smiled.

“Because having seen those symbols I can say with some certainty exactly where he will be going after he has all the information he needs.”

“Where?” I demanded.

Sherlock finished cleaning himself off and ambled back towards the house. 

“I shall tell you once we get back to Baker Street!” he said teasingly.

Sometimes I wondered what I saw in him!

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“Have you ever heard of the Helvetica Bank?”

We had got back, changed, had dinner, had coffee, and I was seriously contemplating actual bodily harm if he didn't get on with it and just damn well tell me! Or at least hiding his barley-sugars.

“No”, I said. “Is it something to do with Switzerland?”

“Only in comparison with the secrecy that they grant their customers”, he said. “It is a small but powerful little institution in its own right, and they protect their clients' interests with guns and bullets if necessary. The London criminal fraternity are thus quite fond of them, particularly as they never ask awkward questions.”

“Must be annoying for those who want answers then!” I grunted, thinking that I knew how such people felt! He beamed at me.

“One of the things that they specialize in is safe deposit boxes which have a number of keys”, he said. “Not physical keys but a set of numbers and letters. If a criminal wishes to make sure that no single individual can get at his ill-gotten gains he can divide the twelve-figure code up amongst a number of people or places so that each will need the other to obtain access.”

Now I saw it.

“A criminal visited four houses called 'The Copper Beeches', and carved a piece of the code into a tree on each property”, I exclaimed. “So now someone is going round collecting them and then destroying the carvings!”

“Indeed”, he said. “Thanks to the ever-efficient Luke – I would have asked Randall but he is not yet out of hospital, which is most fortunate as Mother has just finished yet another terrible story that she wants to read to him - we also have a fair idea as to who that man is.”

“At least you have one family member who is helpful”, I smiled.

“If unsubtle”, he sighed. “Being Luke, he had to add that he had Benji round there, and our favourite fruiterer is 'pushing hard to stay on top of things'. Also that if I wanted him to come round we would have to meet in a downstairs room as he could not manage any stairs just now!”

I felt a pang of sympathy for Sherlock's cousin, who the last time I had seen him had barely been able to muster a smile let alone rise to greet us. It was just a pity that he had a lover so prone to leering at Sherlock. My friend opened a slim folder on his desk.

“Mr. Geoffrey Shriver was hung last November for his part in the Maybridge Bank Robbery, two months prior”, he said. “Not a loss to Mankind by any stretch of the imagination. The proceeds of the robbery were never traced and his two accomplices were both shot dead when the police tried to arrest them. Mr. Shriver did however have a son Aidan, who was away in Canada at the time of his father's execution. He returned in January whereon the family lawyer gave him a letter from his late and unlamented father.”

“The lawyer admitted that?” I asked, surprised.

“No”, he grinned, “Luke just knew!”

“And that letter contained the information as to how to piece together the clues!” I exclaimed. “By God we have him! All we have to do is to wait for him to get the last two pieces of the puzzle and then get him when he goes to the bank!”

To my surprise my friend shook his head.

“No no, John”, he said reprovingly. “This is the son of one of the smartest criminals of his generation. After the unexpected publicity surrounding his attacks thus far he will know full well that there is the danger, however small, that someone may piece together the pattern behind the attacks. He is playing for a huge sum, remember?”

I stared at him, nonplussed.

“What would you do if you were in his shoes?” he asked.

“I am not a criminal”, I said a little huffily. 

“Whereas I, in one sense, am”, Sherlock said. “At least in that I follow justice rather than the letter of the law. Very well. I know that there is the danger of detection but that if anyone does find out what I am about then they are likely to assume that I cannot access the bank until I have all four pieces of the code. But I am one step ahead of them. Although I have struck at two of my four targets I have located the fourth and made a note of the information that it has _without_ attacking the tree. That way, even if someone does piece together the pattern after my third attack they will still be expecting one more strike, while I am off to the bank to collect my winnings.”

I gulped. 

“What if he has already struck?” I asked.

“He has not”, Sherlock assured me. “Luke found that apart from young Master Legant's residence and the two that have been visited thus far, there are only two other houses bearing that name anywhere near London, and that one of those one changed its name from 'Berry Lodge' very recently. Furthermore the remaining house happens to be in Tottenham which is not that far from Gants Hill. One of those two houses will shortly be attacked and then we shall see what ensues.”

I nodded. He seemed to have covered everything.

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Our breakfast the following morning was interrupted by the arrival of a breathless Sergeant Baldur. 

“You were right Mr. Holmes”, he said gratefully imbibing the proffered coffee. “It so nearly ended badly for us. That idiot Mr. Smith went out into the garden despite all our warnings, and got shot at.”

“Is it serious?” I asked. Sherlock had warned me that the head of the Tottenham household was 'a loose cannon' and he had of course been proven right

“Fortunately just a flesh wound”, the sergeant said, relaxing a little. “Serves him right for ignoring instructions, the idiot!”

“Some people feel very protective about their gardens”, Sherlock said. “You have a man posted outside the Helvetica Bank?”

“Three men”, Sergeant Baldur said heavily. “I did not want to take any chances. Mr. Aidan Shriver is from what we know a chip off the old block, and we know for a fact that he has a weapon.”

“There is one question you might ask him when you catch him”, Sherlock said thoughtfully.

“What is that?”

“How he acquired the details of where houses of that name were situated”, Sherlock said. “It was easy for me with my connections but I think someone like Mr. Shriver would have found it rather more difficult, especially considering one of the houses with that name only acquired it after his father was removed from this world.”

“I shall make a point of so doing”, the sergeant said firmly.

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As things turned out, he did not. He returned that same afternoon looking very serious.

“You were right about Mr. Shriver, sir”, he said, sinking heavily into the fireside chair. “He attempted to retrieve something from the Helvetica Bank this morning.”

“Attempted?” I asked. “What went wrong?”

“The bank refused to hand the item over because the key code that he handed over was incorrect”, our visitor explained. “The police got him when he emerged empty-handed.”

“Did he say anything as to how he acquired the information he needed?” Sherlock asked. 

The sergeant laughed hollowly, which was quite unlike him.

“Mr. Shriver did not say anything. Because Mr. Shriver was shot dead with an air-rifle as the police were trying to get him into the police-van!”

I stared at him in horror although I noted that Sherlock did not seem overly surprised.

“Did your inquiries point to any particular person?” Sherlock asked.

“Yes, sir. I am afraid it was just as you feared. A confederate of Professor James Moriarty called at Mr. Shriver's house a few weeks back and we can only presume that he helped the man in his search in return for a share of the potential proceeds. Which of course are most probably locked in the vaults of the Helvetica Bank, possibly forever.”

Sherlock smiled a small smile.

“Did you find the codes on the victim?” he asked.

“Yes”, the sergeant said, looking at him uncertainly. “Why do you ask? They do not work.”

“Do you have the codes on you?” Sherlock pressed.

The sergeant handed over a long slip of paper which Sherlock read before making a single adjustment to it and handing it back.

“If you take that to the Helvetica Bank”, he said with a smile, “you should find the manager is prepared to hand you over the contents of the box in question.”

Sergeant Baldur read the paper and looked curiously at him.

“How can you know that?” he demanded.

“When the doctor and I visited Essex, I found the three symbols in the tree there”, Sherlock explained. “Since it was possible that the man had not yet been there I decided to take an extra precaution, changing the '3' to an '8' with my knife and re-marking the other two symbols to match. I also rubbed the carvings to make them look old.”

“I wonder that this Professor Moriarty did not try to obtain the loot himself”, I said.

“We may assume that the late Mr. Geoffrey Shriver told his son that the code was inscribed in trees at houses of that name”, Sherlock said, “and that he only told Professor Moriarty that he needed access to the houses but not where it was. The professor is not one to take risks when he has someone who will do his work for him. It is my belief that his main plan would have been to shoot young Shriver in broad daylight and take the money, but when he was arrested he had to settle for eliminating the man to try to hide any link with him.”

“So that is three times that you have frustrated his designs”, I said. 

“Yes”, Sherlock said heavily, “but I fear that he will keep trying.”

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I was barely a year away from seeing the end of that 'trying'.

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	7. Case 169: Heir On A G-String ☼

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1890\. The English nobility is often surprising – and when Sherlock's 'other' family the Hawkes face yet more troubles, one Hawke turns out to be more surprising than most.

_[Narration by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire]_

Troubles, they say, always come in bunches. That was certainly true for my Hawke relatives who had faced one problem after another over the years – and now right in the midst of my own troubles, a most unusual new one was about to befall them.

To recap, my late father Lord Sheridan Hawke (I suppose that I really had to get round to telling John about him some day) had married twice. From his first marriage had come a son and two daughters, the son being the ill-starred ninth lord Tobias, my half-brother whom I had idolized as a child from the one time that we had met and who had left me my pipe and deer-stalker hat which I so cherished and only ever used copies of when away from the house. When he took his own life in 'Sixty-Two he was succeeded as the tenth lord by his stepbrother Theobald, the sole issue of Lord Sheridan's second marriage, but as he was only two at the time my father had been forced to resume at least some of the responsibilities that he had yielded to my half-brother two years prior. Most of the work however was taken on by his son-in-law Mr. Henry Buckingham, a distant cousin of his who had married his elder daughter Mary. 

Lord Theobald had come into his titles as of right in 'Seventy-Eight, but the family's problems had been far from over. As well as his own persistent ill-health that made the chances of him having issue about as remote as Neptune, his predecessor had left behind an illegitimate son Harry who had been raised ostensibly as Mrs. Buckingham's son (she had decided that she would waive her own right to the title once he reached eighteen, which he had in 'Eighty). I had helped preserve young Harry Hawke's right to inherit (The Adventure Of The Hawke Inheritance) and now, just as I had more than enough problems on my plate with Professor Moriarty, I was to be drawn into the tangled family skein once more.

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It was All Fools' Day when we had a visitor to Baker Street, which seemed doubly inappropriate for what he brought was no laughing matter. He was a young fellow of some twenty-five years of age or so, and his calling-card had puzzled me.

“You were likely expecting someone older, sir”, he smiled. “I am Mr. Henry Buckingham the third, son of the former Miss Mary Hawke who you assisted over, ahem, my half-brother's inheritance. As you must know my father's duties officially ended when my Uncle Theobald came of age over a decade ago, but he has been in such poor health that my father has remained in demand. He is not well himself of late however, and as I did not wish him to have to make the journey up from Wiltshire in his condition I offered to come instead.”

“You do not have your title on your card?” John asked, surprised.

“You mean Lord Kitebrook?” the young man smiled. “That is actually my father's title for all his years of service to the estate; he says that when he retires a year or so from now he will bestow the title on me. It gives gravitas I suppose, and right now I need all the help that I can get!”

“How may we help?” I asked. His face darkened.

“I am not sure that you can”, he said, “but we are desperate! It concerns my great-great-grandfather the second Lord Harry Hawke. A bit of a wastrel if truth be told; we were damnably lucky that he only had eight years in charge, most of which I would wager he spent blind drunk. We were also fortunate that his wife controlled the purse-strings so that he could not wreck the estate. But it seems that he may have contrived to wreck us instead!”

He took a deep breath before continuing.

“Lord Harry had a number of children”, he said, “the eldest two of whom were twins, Alexander who succeeded him, and Trelawney. Coincidentally his next child was a daughter Charlotte who made the Buckingham link by marrying Mr. George Buckingham, but that is not relevant to the story. They were by and large a sickly bunch; Alexander only outlived his father by three years which meant that his son Sheridan succeeded at the age of thirteen, and Trelawney died young too, although not before having a son Thor.”

Ah yes, Sheridan Hawke. My real father. Hmm.

“That was where the trouble begins”, our guest continued. “My cousin Thor married a rich heiress called Miss Heather Norris who, as is often the way, had one of those inheritances which was dependent on her offspring bearing her surname. Hence their only son Charles became a Norris-Hawke. Thor died the other week whereon his lawyer, acting on his wishes, handed us a sealed letter that his late client had asked to be sent to us. It contained a sworn statement from the midwife attending at the births of Alexander and Trelawney. Apparently it had been _Trelawney_ who was the elder son, but he was so sickly-looking that they decided that the second boy should be declared the first!”

I could see what that meant. If this Mr. Charles Norris-Hawke knew of this and advanced his claim to be Lord Hawke then he might or might not win, but the damage to the family's reputation would be a heavy one - and that was not the only thing.

“Chuck!”

We both looked at John in confoundment. What on earth....

“Mr. Norris-Hawke as he calls himself”, he explained, blushing slightly at his outburst. “He is not a doctor as such but he runs a clinic that deals with hysterical women. My friend Doctor Sweet† refers patients to him quite often.”

I bit back a smile. As I have mentioned before there was still a strong belief among Victorians that any female who enjoyed sex too much was clearly mentally unstable, but I seriously doubted that one quarter of the city's population was so inclined. Although when it came to my mother....

I shuddered at the mental image that my mind most unfairly sprung on me without warning at that precise moment. Ugh!

“You fear for the effect that this might have on your poor uncle”, I said, very glad to move on. “Has anyone approached your cousin as yet?”

“That was where we hoping you might be able to do something, sir”, the young man said earnestly. “If we approached him and he took it the wrong way, the newspapers would have a field-day with the story. You, he might accept.”

I looked appraisingly at my late half-brother's adoptive nephew and second cousin once removed who, therefore, was doubly a member of my own family. There was a superficial resemblance to his noble relative but not that spark of pure goodness which had once made such an indelible impression on a seven-year-old boy called Sherlock Holmes, one never to be forgotten. Still, family.

“If you leave me your cousin's address, I promise that I will do what I can”, I said.

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Both John and I noted on many occasions that the vast bulk of our cases, even if they started by looking promising, often petered out into nothing. Such investigations were by their nature not shared with the British public who would have found little of interest in them and I generally did not bother with them; I only made notes on this one because of the familial connection. For it too suddenly charged towards a conclusion rather faster than even I could have anticipated. 

I had initiated some inquiries into this Mr. Norris-Hawke – my second cousin if I had things right – and was waiting for Miss St. Leger to get back to me before arranging a meeting with him (she would not normally have taken so long but she was doing something important for the government just then and I had told her not to hurry, especially as it involved her having dealings with Randall and I had strong hopes she might snap and beat him up). Hence some two days later we were sat enjoying a quiet afternoon in when someone sent up a card asking to see us. Watson read it and his eyebrows shot up.

“Mr. Charles Norris-Hawke wishes to see us”, he said, “on a matter of some urgency.”

“Sometimes the mountain comes to the mountaineer”, I said, as surprised as he was. “We had better have him up.”

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My distant cousin was a hard man to describe. A few years younger than Mr. Buckingham, he was nothing like a Hawke in appearance being dark-haired, of average height and with a stubbled heard on a narrower face. He looked more the typical East End bruiser than anyone with even the remotest ties to the medical profession. Yet despite looking nothing like him he somehow held the late Lord Tobias's focussed goodness within his unprepossessing frame. I felt instinctively that in some way this man would never do evil, yet I knew not how or why I was so sure about that.

Our visitor placed a set of documents on the table next to him.

“I am a plain man, Mr. Holmes, Doctor Watson”, he said. “My lawyer gave me this and told me that per my late father's request he had sent a copy to my relations. Also that they might well consult you as he knew that they had done in the past. Have they?”

I saw no reason to deny that.

“Your cousin young Mr. Henry Buckingham has been here representing the family”, I said. “Naturally he is concerned.”

“Not half as much as I am!” Mr. Norris-Hawke said fervently, “A journalist was round at the library where I work today. They are looking into me already!”

I looked at him shrewdly.

“A simple question”, I said. “Do you wish to advance a claim to the title of Lord Hawke, sir?”

“Never!” he said firmly. “My family has gone through enough already; I have ben watching them from afar. But you know what the newspapers are like, sir. Once they get their teeth into a story they will not let go.”

“Then perhaps we might give them something to feast on”, I said with a smile. “If you would be pleased to wait a minute.”

I rose and crossed to my desk where I wrote a few lines on a piece of paper, then brought it across to him.

“The matter can very easily be resolved by the family buying out your claim...” I began. 

I got no further.

“I will not take a brass farthing from my family!” our visitor said hotly. “I have something called _honour_ , sir!”

I smiled at his vehemence. He was truly Lord Tobias's blood.

“I did not imply that you should be demanding a large pay-off”, I said. “However, legally it would be better for you to accept something. I think that I know what.”

I gestured to the note that I had just written.

“If you sign that with the doctor and I as witnesses”, I said, “it waives all your entitlement to the Hawke estate.”

“They will say that I have been bought off!” the man insisted.

“The terms make it clear that you refuse all financial gains and have agreed with Lord Hawke's family that they pay a large sum in lieu of that to a charity of your choice”, I said. “The newspapers will praise both your generosity of spirit and their philanthropy, in helping a good cause rather than a bunch of greedy lawyers.”

Our guest looked at me warily, but nodded.

“No going back”, he said. “I am really happy where I am in life right now, and I want what is best for my family. Especially with poor Theo so ill.”

“I will always do what is best for them”, I promised, adding silently that I was obliged to for many reasons. “You have my word on that.”

He nodded and signed his title away. John and I signed too, and I promised to have a copy sent to him once Lord Hawke's representatives had signed it too. I was just congratulating myself on a happy resolution all round when Betty entered with another card. I scowled when I read it.

“Randall is here”, I sighed. “I knew we had gone too long without seeing the pest.”

“He might be here after me”, our guest smiled. “You have best have him sent up, sir.”

We looked at him in surprise but did as he had asked.

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Randall entered the room even more ungraciously than usual (some achievement for him), and scowled mightily when he saw our visitor.

“Aha!” he snapped. “Found you at last!”

“My offices are just round the corner from Harley Street, sir”, Mr. Norris-Hawke said mildly. “And they are not exactly hidden from the public; there is a plaque outside that I am sure even _you_ might have been capable of reading. Well, probably capable.”

John did himself no favours by sniggering at that. I managed not to. Sort of managed. I thought about managing not to....

“This villain has been behaving most unprofessionally”, Randall said. “He has been.... seeing to the ladies being sent to him!”

I guessed immediately what he was alluding to, but there was no way that I was going to make this easy for him.

“What is wrong with that, Randall?” I asked innocently.

“Not seeing, _seeing!”_ he snapped.

“I see patients all the time”, John said unhelpfully. “So what?”

“He has been servicing them!” Randall almost shouted.

“'Tis truly shocking how _some_ people treat ladies these days”, I said, wondering at the fact that a certain sibling of mine did not even have the grace to blush. “Is this true, Mr. Norris-Hawke?”

Our (welcome) visitor grinned wolfishly.

“I undertake a course of treatment for certain patients”, he said. “I believe that the best way to cure this hysteria is to so overload the sexual senses that the patient is fully sated, and no longer feels the desire for sex. Well, for at least a while.”

“I shall report you to the police!” Randall said firmly.

“I would advise against that”, I said. “After all, it anything about my client does emerge in the coming days, Randall, then there is the most definite danger that what happened between you and Mother's friend Miss Mary Scargill would also come out. I dare say that Mother would not be best pleased!”

John, unhelpful as ever, very deliberately muttered 'lounge-lizard, Mother's friend Mary Scargill, not best pleased' as he wrote. Randall gave him a hate-filled glare then left in a flurry of bad cologne. My new relative thanked us again and he too left, doubtless to 'help' more hysterical ladies.

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“Amazing!” John said once he was gone. “He could have had so much riches, yet he gave it all away.”

“A wise head and a 'helpful' quasi-doctor”, I smiled. “The estate may well have been ruined in lawyers' fees – you know how they can drag things out when there is this much uncertainty – and he likes his family too much to hurt them. No, this is the best way and the greatest number of people will be made happy with it.”

“Especially all his clients!” John grinned. “Who would have thought it to have looked at him?”

I looked sharply at him. That was most definitely his fake innocence tone which I did not believe for one second!

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Postscriptum: A sanatorium, a hospital and a school around the Middlesex town of Uxbridge where Mr. Norris-Hawke then lived all benefited greatly from his philanthropic actions. He never married, although I do not know whether this was because he feared his offspring might try to re-initiate his claim or perhaps that he was just too busy with his patients (!). However as a Hawke I kept an eye on him just in case - because he was, after all, family.

Talking of family, a certain stepbrother whom I no longer liked at all told me that he had heard about Mr. Norris-Hawke on the grapevine and bemoaned the fact that he did not bat for his side. Especially as Campbell had seen a photograph of the young fellow who had, for whatever reason, allowed himself to be photographed wearing some minuscule scrap of material called a G-String. And my 'new' cousin kept the original picture in his offices where all his, ahem, ladies could see it. 

There really should be some laws about advertising.

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_Notes:_   
_† Doctor Joseph Sweet, the son of Doctor Joshua Sweet whom Sherlock and John had assisted in the case of another prodigious fellow, Mr. Miles Thatch (Cadence And Cream Cake)._

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	8. Case 170: The Adventure Of Heath Row

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1890\. In any war, allies can spell the difference between victory and defeat, but every ally has their price. Sherlock employs rather unusual tactics across several thousand miles to win one very important ally to his side - a royal one!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mentioned also as the case of the Ferrers documents.

_[Narration by Doctor John Watson, M.D.]_

Sherlock had a beautiful face – he still has, for that matter – but when he smiled I could almost hear my manliness rolling its metaphorical eyes in despair at my utter mushiness. So after months of stress as his efforts against the vile Professor James Moriarty wore on him, the slowly dawning smile at the recently-arrived telegraph could only be good news.

“What is it?” I asked hopefully.

“I am about to undertake one of the most important cases in my career”, he said quietly. “Success would put me a significant step closer to defeating my deadly rival. Failure... is unthinkable!”

“Mr. Sherlock Holmes does not fail!” I scoffed.

“You have been reading too many of your own books, doctor”, he smiled. “I am asked to go down to Ascension House in Heath Row, Middlesex in order to clarify the circumstances surrounding the recent passing and will of one Mr. Aaron Ferrers, Esquire.”

I waited but apparently that was it.

“What is the important part?” I prompted.

“The lady requesting my services is a Miss Aliana Ferrers.”

It was going to be one of Those Mornings. Perhaps I should have leveraged an extra couple of coffees into him beforehand. Instead I tried a plaintive stare. He seemed to snap out of whatever trance he was in and smiled weakly at me.

“Miss Ferrers is the niece of one Mrs. Margaret Ball”, he said. “Queen Molly.”

“Ah, Queen of the Begg....”

I froze. I could almost see that disapproving look across the sugar-tongs and remembered that this was the sort of woman whose Displeasure usually ended in one getting a short yet decidedly terminal tour of the Thames river-bed.

“Mendicants!” I quickly amended, noting my friend's smile at my save. _“She_ has asked for your help?”

“Yes”, Sherlock said. “I had hoped that such a chance would arise, but now that it has, I am not sure that I am up to it.”

I do not think that I had ever seen him so unsure as to his own abilities. I sat on the couch and looked pointedly at him and he fairly flew across the room into my embrace, with such rapidity that the couch slid back slightly.

“Oof!” I gasped. “Well, if you move as fast as that on the case, you should be fine.”

He spent some little time making himself comfortable before he let out the sort of happy sigh that would have made me do so much more for him. I would have considered just how much more but my brain seemed suddenly intent on paddling its way up a long river in north-east Africa. Probably in pursuit of my manliness, which was last reported to be entering Ethiopia and requesting asylum.

“The case is the second lucky break in a fortnight”, he sighed. “I am afraid that I am using up all my good fortune now and will have none left for later, when I need it.”

I shuddered at the thought of what seemed increasingly likely to be some sort of showdown with the vile Professor Moriarty and pulled him closer. He whimpered again and I lightly kissed his overly long hair.

“What was the first piece of luck?” I asked.

“Not for a young fellow named Alfie Young”, he sighed. “He was a mendicant and was stabbed to death when two men considered him to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Was he?” I asked. “Wrong, I mean.”

“The important thing was that the man who stabbed him was one of Professor Moriarty's men”, he explained. “Queen Molly found out – it would have been a miracle to rank alongside the loaves and fishes thing if she had not - and was Displeased. Her subjects have always been strictly neutral when it comes to the upper criminal fraternity – she will not allow them to work for anyone she considers undesirable although she has no problem with petty theft of food say, in order to stay alive. She sent to Professor Moriarty to hand the man over or to face Consequences.”

I could again hear the capital letters and I already knew that when that lady talked about being Displeased and facing Consequences, it was high time to make sure that your will was written and that your funeral was paid for.

“I did not dare to hope that my adversary, even for such a proud man as he, could fail to see that making an enemy of Queen Molly would be the ultimate in foolishness”, Sherlock mused. “I can only be thankful that he accepted some bad advice and refused her request. His man did not make it to the end of the day.”

“So she is against him now?” I asked, my hopes rising. To my disappointment he shook his head.

“It is not that easy”, he said. “Mendicants function very much on the Biblical philosophy of 'an eye for an eye'. Now that the killer is dead they will consider that that is very much that. However this development in Middlesex gives me a chance to be of assistance to the lady, and if I succeed then she will be able to inform her subjects that she is Pleased with me.”

Again I could hear the capital.

“Mendicants are just about everywhere”, Sherlock said, “and they are excellently positioned to cause all sorts of inconveniences and annoyances to an organization as large as Professor Moriarty's has become. A policeman directed to the wrong street at the wrong time, a fire started near some highly flammable materials, a cart where the wheel 'just happens' to fall off _en route_ to a criminal act - my enemy's luck could suddenly turn very bad, and in such a way that he will be able to do nothing about. Hence I must succeed.”

“What is this case that she asks for your help in?” I asked.

“It does not sound of great import”, he said, “but then so many of my cases start out like that and blossom into something larger. Queen Molly's niece Miss Ferrers is her late sister Mary's sole daughter, Mary Ball having married a Mr. Alan Ferrers of Heath Row, in Middlesex. His is the estate in question. He had married before and although his first wife provided him with some six children only one survived, a daughter Penelope. The latter has recently married a Captain Hugh West. With both Queen Molly's sister and brother-in-law also having passed, her niece Miss Ferrers and the latter's step-sister Mrs. West had looked set to inherit his estate.”

“Is it a large estate?” I asked.

“In size but not particularly wealth”, he said. The Ferrers family own most of the land around the village, right up to the Great West Road in places, but it is all poor quality scrub although I understand that it has been successfully employed as orchards. Then again, if London keeps expanding the way it does it may one day become prime building land; who can tell the future? But I doubt that that would be for many a year yet. No, it was what happened next that was surprising.”

“Mr. Ferrers died two weeks ago, and after the funeral his will was duly read. It contained a most unpleasant surprise for his two daughters. He acknowledged that when young he had had a son from a relationship with a lady of the night in London and that the boy had subsequently been raised by an old army friend of his with whom he had gone to India – not himself as a soldier; Mr. Ferrers had been in what they are now calling logistics, supplying the many needs of the modern Army. He had returned but the boy had stayed out there and lived with a Colonel Fisher who had since died, but fortunately not until his charge had come of age.”

“The colonel had had a son of a similar age, which I presume was one factor in the decision to have him raised in such a climate. The natural son's name is Mr. Ferdinand Fisher – he took his guardian's name - and he is now about thirty-five years of age. He is married with two sons although his wife has passed. He is to receive two-thirds of the estate, the other third being divided equally between his half-sisters.”

“It seems straightforward enough”, I said, “but as you said, so many of your cases do. At first!”

He smiled at that.

“True”, he admitted. “But at least I have someone at my side who can write me as the dashing, romantic hero, beloved by women and envied by men.”

“And fortuitously not bowed down by the slightest degree of modesty!” I snarked.

“True”, he said. “But then why would I be?”

I shook my head at him but smiled.

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The small hamlet of Heath Row lay on the far side of the county of Middlesex and was, considering how close it lay to London, surprisingly difficult to get to. Two underground trains took us to the western terminus of the District Line at Hounslow Barracks† from where we had a ride of some several miles, albeit through some pleasant countryside. Out here as Sherlock had said the lands seemed to have been given over more to orchards than anything else, presumably to supply the ever-growing city of London which was slowly encroaching along the Great West Road to the north. I wondered what the future held for this remote place and for the estate that we were looking into.

Sherlock had stopped at the Baker Street post-office to send a telegram but would not tell me who to, although when I asked him if it was to his annoying lounge-lizard of a brother (who was finally out of hospital and rather more amenable after his 'stormy' experience of late!) he smiled knowingly. I only hoped that the pest would not appear in this case at least; he was most definitely an example of absence making the heart grow a fraction less detesting towards. A year without him would be very welcome. A few decades would be even better!

We had arranged to meet Miss Ferrers at her late father's house along with the lawyer administering the estate, a Mr. Hart Mandelson. I do not usually have a high regard for the legal profession (although as I have remarked before, I suppose that like sewage workers, politicians and journalists they are an essential part of our society) and this weasel-faced piece of pomposity in his early fifties with his perfumed and badly-dyed black hair only served to reinforce my opinions. We were admitted into the old building which I noted did not seem in very good condition, and the four of us sat around a large table. Sherlock turned to the lawyer.

“Can you tell me more about this son of the late Mr. Ferrers, sir?” he asked.

“His father maintained monthly contact with his guardian through the telegraphic system”, the fellow said. “Mr. Fisher lives in Calcutta and married a lady over there – a Miss Boston I think she was originally; she died two years back. They have two boys, Frederick and Edward, neither yet ten years of age.”

Sherlock seemed to think about that. I wondered why but his next question distracted me for its seeming irrelevance.

“I see that you have gypsies camping on a corner of the estate.”

The lawyer blinked at him presumably suspecting a trap but Sherlock just stared back until he answered. Predictably the lawyer did not last long under that azure gaze.

“The late Mr. Ferrers did not like having them on his land”, he said, wiping his eyes, “but his father before him had always allowed it and he told me that he felt that it was beholden of him to continue that policy.”

Sherlock was looking at the lawyer in a way which told me that he knew something but was not yet prepared to reveal it. The fellow fidgeted in his seat.

“What will become of the place now I do not know”, he said, visibly sweating now. “I assume that given his current location Mr. Fisher may choose to sell it and have the money forwarded to him in India. As he owns more than fifty per cent of it that is his legal right, provided of course that he properly remunerates the other beneficiaries as he has said he would do.”

“Has he contacted you as yet?” Sherlock asked. The lawyer nodded. 

“He sent a telegram only two days ago”, he said. “He said that he wishes that he could have made it home for the funeral but of course even in this day and age distance precludes that. He did ask me to make a large donation to the charity that his father had supported, one for the old soldiers and seamen; as you may know his father hated the paraphernalia of modern funerals and forbade all wreaths, requesting donations to his charity instead. Mr. Fisher does not wish to take a final decision on the estate's future for a few weeks, which I feel is quite understandable.”

Sherlock turned to Miss Ferrers.

“It seems very unfair that you should be deprived of your inheritance, madam”, he observed.

“It was my father's final wishes”, she said, “and I must respect them. Penny and I had already agreed that the place was both too large and too ramshackle for either of us to live here even if we had inherited it.”

I detected a certain wistfulness in her tone, although I could not imagine just one person living in this ramshackle barn of a place.

“We shall go to Staines”, Sherlock said, “as it is the nearest town of any size.”

Was it my imagination or did the lawyer seem slightly uneasy at that?

“What is your involvement in this matter, sir?” the fellow asked querulously.

“I am a family friend”, Sherlock said. “Friends are there for the rough times, are they not?”

I was to remember that particular turn of phrase, especially in light of the dramatic events of the next few days.

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I wondered if it was a coincidence that the hotel that Sherlock chose in the Thames-side town just happened to be in the adjoining street to Mrs. West's house where her step-sister, our client in effect, lived. Sherlock however successfully distracted me with a surprise excursion on our first day there, to the nearby town of Egham.

“I know how much you like these things”, he said, “so I thought that you would enjoy coming to the famous Runnymede. It seems a shame to have somewhere so famous right on London's doorstep yet to never visit it.”

He was right. The meadow in which that most famous of documents, Magna Carta, had been signed was redolent with history, even though it was as wet as I had heard described. Little wonder that the barons had decided to meet King John here; one could hardly start a full-scale battle when one kept sinking into the ground every five minutes! Fortunately the modern paths amongst the marshes were dry and well-kept, and we enjoyed our day of history. Well I did; I was quite sure that Sherlock was bored rigid but that he took me there showed how much he loved me.

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The following day we had an early call (thankfully not that early; Sherlock was fully caffeinated) from Miss Ferrers.

“Mr. Mandelson has been sent the most startling news from India”, she told us. “You will not believe this but Mr. Fisher's younger son Edward has been killed. _In an elephant stampede!_ Strangest of all, the same message was sent to both myself and Penny!”

I stared at her incredulously. My friend of course was not the least bit perturbed as if elephant stampedes regularly befell people that he knew (they did not as far as I was aware, although in the case of a certain lounge-lizard I could but hope. Maybe if I could swing a case at London Zoo....). 

“It is a most dangerous country for all its glamour” Sherlock said, looking at me reprovingly for some reason (all right, I suppose that there was the animal welfare thing). “I really think that Mr. Fisher would do better to return to England and take up his father's estate. Still, he will at least inherit much of the money. That reminds me Miss Ferrers, I neglected to ask our lawyer friend as to the total value of the estate in question. Judging from all the lands that I can see are part of it, even your one-sixth share must be worth a fair amount.”

“Mr. Mandelson is reluctant to raise my hopes until the whole estate has been assessed”, she said. “I did not like to say so in front of him but I always cherished a hope that I might live in a small cottage on the estate one day having sold the rest of it. The roads in the area are very quiet and I would enjoy the solitude.”

“If it is worth a decent amount then perhaps that may still come to pass”, Sherlock smiled. “You never know.”

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The following day (Thursday) Sherlock wanted to see an old friend of his who lived in Windsor, so I got to play the tourist around that town for a while. The good news was that there were no more untimely deaths.

On Thursday. Friday was a different matter. We had called on Mrs. West to speak to her about her late father when a telegram came for her. She read it in astonishment and then passed it to Sherlock, who raised his eyebrows.

“Dear me!” he said, shaking his head. “Mr. Fisher seems to have upset the Fates by his sudden acquisition of all that wealth.”

“What has happened?” Miss Ferrers asked anxiously.

“Mr. Fisher's elder son Frederick has died after being stung by a poisonous snake”, he said. “He approached rather too near to one of those snake-charmers in the streets, and the creature lashed out at him.”

I thought that rather odd. I was sure that I had read somewhere that such creatures were usually de-fanged by their owners for their own protection. Maybe this had been a rare and unfortunate exception.

“Now it is just Mr. Fisher”, I said. “Poor fellow, for all his riches. Although there is the fact that he is young enough to marry again.”

“You said that your husband is in the Army”, Sherlock said to Mrs. West. “Where is he stationed just now?”

“He has just taken up his new post in India”, she said proudly.

Judging from the look on her sister's face I could see that Miss Ferrers had seen the implication of that, even if our hostess had not. I tried to suppress the image of a British Army captain going round and....

No. I was foolish to even think such a thing!

_Or was I?_

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On Saturday we met a decidedly edgy Mr. Mandelson at the Hall, which seemed to have crumbled just a little bit more since our last visit. I shut the door behind us rather more carefully that I had planned; I did not want Sherlock's ongoing battle with the vile Professor James Moriarty to end with 'Great Detective Flattened Inside Collapsed House'!

“This is very sad”, Mr. Mandelson sighed. “Poor Mr. Fisher. He wired me this morning and said that the deaths of his sons had quite changed his mind on returning to England. He feels that this inheritance has been the cause of his bad luck and he wishes to sell the estate at the first opportunity. Fortunately I have a couple of people who have expressed an interest....”

“When did you receive that telegram?” Sherlock interrupted. I thought that was rather rude and quite unlike him, but said nothing. He had to have had a reason.

“Just as I was leaving my house this morning”, the lawyer said, evidently surprised by the question. “Why? Is there a problem?”

“Not at all”, Sherlock smiled. 

He looked around the room, almost expectantly I thought, but nothing happened – until there was a knock at the door. One of the place's few remaining staff entered and handed the lawyer a note which he read.

I had thought that Mr. Randall Holmes's face at the sight of his mother coming round that screen in Lincolnshire had been deathly, but this came a close second. The man looked as if he has seen the Grim Reaper himself!

“Is something wrong?” Sherlock asked politely.

“No!” the lawyer said in far too high a voice. “Nothing!”

My friend narrowed his eyes at him.

“I do not think that 'nothing' would case that sort of reaction”, he observed. “May I see the telegram?”

“It is private!” the man said. “It....”

I do not know how he did it but Sherlock seemed to almost teleport across the room and grab the telegram from the lawyer's quivering hand. The man tried to snatch it back but Sherlock was away from him.

“'Regret to inform you, Mr. Fisher killed by crocodile while crossing river'”, he read. “Oh dear.”

“This is terrible!” the lawyer moaned.

“For Mr. Fisher I suppose”, Sherlock said equably. “Or at least it would have been - _had he ever existed!”_

The silence in the room was suddenly very loud.

“What do you mean, sir?” the lawyer demanded. 

Sherlock smiled darkly.

“I mean that the game is up, Mr. Mandelson”, he said. “Although you doubtless thought when you became responsible for this estate that you would just be swindling two ladies who would be easy to outwit, one of those ladies has certain friends who are very powerful indeed. They employed me to ensure that their relative got what they deserved, regardless of vermin like your good self.”

“I know from my inquiries that you have been defrauding the estate for some considerable time. Indeed I would dare say that even with the untimely deaths of the three non-existent overseas beneficiaries, Mr. Ferrers's daughters will initially be barely any better off that they would have been as you have ransacked over half the estate for your own ends. I shall of course make sure that as much as possible of that is retrieved from you while you are in gaol. Be assured that your transfer of most of those ill-gotten gains into your wife's name will not save you; her own signature more than proves her complicity in your vile actions for which she too can expect to see a gaol cell from the inside. Starting immediately, as she was arrested shortly after you left for work!”

The lawyer had somehow gone even paler.

“You knew that Mr. Ferrers's death might expose your dealings, but you had long planned for that. Most men have at least one youthful indiscretion to their discredit” (I blushed at this point) “and once you knew where his was you acted. You had a friend who lived in roughly the right part of India and, even better, had sons of his own of about the right age.. Your friend sent regular telegrams, possibly even the occasional poor-quality photograph, to assure your client that all was well. Particularly when it came to your wallet Mr. Mandelson, all was _very_ well!”

The lawyer groaned again.

“I was so unlucky!” he wailed. “Why did Tony do this to me?”

To my surprise Sherlock laughed.

“Oh Mr. Mandelson”, he smiled. “That was not _luck.”_

The lawyer looked at him sharply. 

“I have contacts of my own in India”, Sherlock said. “Well, my brother Randall has, which is much the same thing just now if he wishes to retain the use of certain appendages that for some strange reason he is fond of. Your friend has been under arrest for over a week now and all the telegrams detailing the terribly bad luck to befall the Ferrers bloodline came from my agents. I decided to toy with you for a while, just as you decided to steal from your own client.”

The lawyer glared at Sherlock.

“Why you....”

I whipped out my gun and pointed it at him.

“Please!” I grinned. “I have always wanted to go on trial for justifiable homicide!”

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Somewhat annoyingly Sergeant Pelaw, the local policeman, arrived just moments later with two of his constables to take Mr. Mandelson away. I sighed with relief at the case being over.

“It is hard on Miss Ferrers and Mrs. West”, Sherlock said as we walked away from Ascension House, myself more than glad to be outside its crumbling walls. “They will as I said be worse off because of that scoundrel's malfeasance, at least initially. But Luke is confident that most of the money can be recovered although it will take some considerable time, and he can make sure that people are prepared to wait for their money. Miss Ferrers will have her cottage eventually.”

“Best of all Queen Molly will be Pleased with you”, I smiled. Things were looking up and I had hopes that, just perhaps, we might come through this dark threat from someone who called himself a doctor but was palpably nothing of the sort.

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Postscriptum: Mrs. Mandelson served a considerable time in gaol for her attempt to help her husband in his nefarious dealings, and he would have too had he not died of a fever only two years into his sentence. With almost all the money recovered both Miss Ferrers and Mrs. West received very handsome inheritances; Miss Ferrers did not purchase a cottage in the area as a chance to buy an even better one in a most charming part of western Essex came up and she took that instead. She married two years later and she, her husband and family still live there.

Seven years ago (1929) part of the former Heath Row estate became the Harmondsworth (or Great West) Aerodrome. By last year it was being called Heathrow Aerodrome, although all commercial flights continue to operate out of Croydon, to the south of London. This year (1936) Middlesex County Council very sensibly ruled out the idea of commercial flights ever flying in to the place for who would be stupid enough to have a major airport for London right next to a sewage works? There would be no 'airport' at Heathrow, that was for sure!‡

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_Notes:_   
_† Renamed Hounslow West in 1925. Piccadilly line services began in 1933 and District lines ones ended in 1964. Heath Row village was demolished in 1944 with the opening of the airport; Hounslow West Station was closed and another of the same name built on an adjoining site to allow through running on the extensions to Hatton Cross (1975) and the airport (1977)._   
_‡ Construction of a major airport aimed at long-haul travel to the Far East began in 1944, but the end of the war the following year led to a switch to civilian use. By 1950 the airport had six runways but ever larger plans eventually forced that to be reduced to two, though as of 2020 plans were under consideration for a third runway. Until flying suddenly became rather less popular for some reason...._

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	9. Interlude: A Little Chat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1890\. There are a lot of Dalmatians, a porcelain teapot and a poker.

_[Narration by Lady Aelfrida Holmes]_

I have never understood why people think screaming and yelling at people without any warning on one's part achieves little more than a sore throat. It is much more efficient to save up the many annoyances and wrongs committed by someone and then visit vengeance upon then in one very satisfying and much more devastating burst. Although I will admit that I had had to read my sweet little Sherry-werry's letter from Lincolnshire twice before I could quite believe it. Surely even Randall could not have been _that_ stupid?

Apparently he could have been, for in my hearing the smarmy bastard dared to threaten my sweet little Sherry-werry's life! I came charging out and gave him What-For; a long stay in hospital might, I hoped, finally drive home to him just how Absolutely Bloody Furious I was! And even if it did not then at least _I_ felt better, although sadly I broke another walking-stick in the process (they really do not make things the way they used to).

Incredibly I was destined to become even more annoyed for a few days after my return I had a visitor, Miss St. Leger. A most formidable lady; it was so unfortunate that I had left my latest masterpiece with Randall for editing which I am sure she would have enjoyed hearing. But as dear Sherry-werry pointed out, the pest might as well make himself useful while he was immobile. I know how grateful he was; there were tears of happiness when I showed him '101 Dalmatians', all about love and lust among fishermen in that part of Austria-Hungary. Over a ton of stories for him to work through, the lucky boy!

Miss St. Leger informed me that some Horrible Personage out there was threatening the life of my sweet little Sherry-werry, and that certain plans were in place that would require the assistance of even Randall (so it had to be bad). I was most impressed that she managed to convey exactly what she thought of him without saying any rude words – Lord knows, I find that difficult enough - but the end result was that she feared he might take the opportunity to not do his tasks properly, which might endanger my sweet little Sherry-werry. 

_Right!_

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Randall was finally out of hospital and I had had two men bring him in (I knew that he did not need a wheelchair but he was always one for a free ride). When he came in to where my Writing Circle was having its weekly meeting he looked somewhat surprised; I made a note to get the fire made up as he was shivering for some reason. I also thought that he looked rather pale after all that time in hospital, especially considering that I had been so kind to fill his time with my wonderful stories. He obviously needed more of them.

“So good of you to drop by, dear boy”, I smiled. “We are just about to start discussing each other's works.”

“I can only stay a few minutes, Mother”, he said, glancing at the door for some reason. “My doctor said that I needed plenty of bed rest.....”

“Nonsense!” I smiled. “And it is so good that you came home today, dear. I have something Important to talk to you about.”

“What is it, Mother?” he asked, looking even shiftier than usual (some achievement for him).

I lowered my voice as I poured tea from my favourite teapot, the porcelain one shaped like a toilet that had inspired 'Flushing Meadows', my brilliant story about the incontinent courtier and the hose-pipe. Which needed re-editing now that I came to think about it; for once it was quite handy having Randall around.

“A certain person has told me that someone else out there is threatening the life of my sweet little Sherry-werry”, I said as I poked the fire. “Of course I know that _you_ in particular will make sure that nothing bad does happen to him.”

“OfcourseMother”, he said, now sweating slightly for some reason. I thought of the poker in my hand.... no, not yet.

“Because if by some terrible mischance anything _did_ happen”, I continued lightly, “then I would be.... Apocalyptic.”

He gulped in terror. As well he might; that was what dear Anna calls a full-scale Level Twelve, the only one thus far having been caused by the Goldfish Incident for which the pest before me had been partly responsible. It had taken him both him and Guilford over a year to get rid of their limps and we had had to move house, but then they really do not make walls and pillars the way they used to, either.

“But let us not discuss business”, I said gaily. “Besides, the ladies here want to hear what you think of their works as well as mine. Make yourself comfortable, dear.”

As he followed me across the room I was sure that I caught him looking to the heavens. I have heard it said that some people find religion in later life, but if Randall did let anything happen to my sweet little Sherry-werry then that would not be a problem for him. 

_He would not be seeing his later life!_

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	10. Case 171: The Adventure Of King Athelstan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1890\. A vitally important case that was a matter of life and.... actually it was another missing animal. Worse, it involved certain fictional story writings of a certain blue-eyes someone's not distant enough maternal parent.

_[Narration by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire]_

John stared at me in confusion.

“Pardon?” he managed at last, clearly thinking that he had misheard me. I was not the least bit surprised.

“We are going to Ulverston in Lancashire, on the edge of the Lakes”, I said. “Mother has asked me to find some lady's missing pet.”

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That I would be travelling some three hundred miles from London at a time when I was having to combat the vile Professor Moriarty may seem strange if not downright bizarre, let alone the cause of that journey, but there was it turned out a perfectly good reason. Not just that the professor had been shot at by a rival against whom he had to momentarily turn his attentions, but because of what I had just told John and which I knew he was going to find utterly incredible.

“You are trying to tell me”, he said at last, “that in this Nation of ours there are a number of ladies who read your mother's stories – _and actually like them?”_

He sounded like I was trying to convince him that the moon really was made of cheese! There were of course some of Mother's stranger friends - it was really wrong of both John and Father to persist in calling them 'the Coven' even if rather too many of them did favour black clothes - who also did something that they called writing, but I had assumed this was just one of those things. That there were a number of people elsewhere in this Nation who read that sort of thing and.... _liked it?_ Worse, were prepared to admit in public that they liked it? I myself had disbelieved it at first and only when the offices of the efficient Miss St. Leger (who had hardly believed it herself for that matter, impressive indeed considering what she came across on a daily basis) confirmed it, had I yielded to the unimaginable. The unimaginable and utterly horrible!

“Mother has a number of people out there who communicate with her through both the telegraphic system and the general post”, I said, “and they find the stories of Fidelia Raleigh most enjoyable. I recall you yourself commented on 'Happy Days', the one about the Viking warriors who found a rather unusual way to keep warm on a long voyage to Greenland?”

He shuddered.

“That was mean of you, making me read that!” he grumbled. “I can never look at a history book from those times without thinking... those long oars with their tapered ends!”

“Since for some reason publishers like your own Mr. Brett and Mr. Burke seem disinclined to inflict her works on the Nation, she shares them with her admirers using the postal service”, I said. “One of the ladies who is so strangely inclined, a Mrs. Jefferson of the town of Ulverston, has sent her a message bemoaning the fact that on top of everything else she has just lost her pet.”

“How did she lose it exactly?” he asked.

“I have no details as yet”, I admitted. “However Mother has asked that we ride to this lady's assistance, and given her recent actions concerning a certain person recently released from hospital, I felt that we had to oblige.”

As I had known it would the reference to the recovering Randall had him smiling happily at the memory. We both definitely owed Mother a favour for that, even if I had managed to replace her broken walking-stick with an even better (and even deadlier!) one. Doubly reinforced this time, with a steel core. I had been tempted by the one which apparently concealed a rapier but John had said that that would have been quite inappropriate. Then he pointed out that they were currently developing one containing a folding rifle, so that would clearly be much more suitable! He was getting even worse!

All right, I kept the advertisement for it. _But that is not the point!_

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“It is really neither one thing or the other.”

I could see what John meant as we traversed the streets of the small town of Ulverston. For those unacquainted with the map of England, the county of Westmorland has a short coastline along the fringes of Morecambe Bay, just enough to interpose between the main part of Lancashire with its great cities of Liverpool and Manchester to the south, and the Furness district centred around the ship-building town of Barrow-in-Furness (it is possible but highly inadvisable to walk between the two parts of the county over the treacherous Morecambe Bay Sands; more than one person has lost their life in so trying).

It was the Furness Railway on which we had completed our journey, a smart and rather unusual copper-coloured engine and train having just deposited us in this small town; John explained that the colour came from the iron ore that was a large part of the company's business. It was as my friend said neither part of industrial Furness nor the beautiful Lakes to the north. 

A beautiful area indeed, I thought, but not as beautiful as the man beside me. Although he would have been mortified if I had used that word about him. But then he was even more beautiful when he blushed, the freckles that he so hated standing out like stars in the sky.

I was so far gone, it was beyond parody!

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Mrs. Margaret Jefferson lived in Argyll Street in the southern part of the town, and I did not need to be a detective of any ability to work out that my dear mother may have 'forgotten' to mention one small but arguably important fact about her. A well-kempt woman in her early forties, she was very heavily pregnant - and had just secured for herself the services of one of London's best doctors for her very impending happy event. Hmm.

“I can't believe you gentlemen came all this way from London!” she exclaimed. “Lady Holmes said you would when she sent her last story, the one about the tentacled sea-monster, but this is wonderful.”

That would have been '24', the tentacled sea-monster which was able to 'pleasure' a whole life-boat crew at one and the same time for a whole day. The 'highlight' of Mother's last Reading which the craven coward next to me had refused point blank to attend, although he had consented to a long session of manly embracing when I had come home still shaking. Thankfully he had also had Mrs. Hudson prepare me a huge bacon dinner which had helped me recover from my terrible ordeal.

“We are delighted to be able to be of assistance”, I said, wondering if there was something wrong with her eyes the way in which she was looking at me. Although John's subtle shuffling of his feet and a barely-suppressed annoyed cough suggested the reason for that. “My mother did not unfortunately provide me with any details of the case, so how may we help?”

I always noted the smile on John's face when I said 'we' or 'us' at times like these. I could not have done my job without his steadying presence but I know he felt that he often contributed very little, and always looked so happy when I praised him for his work. Mrs. Jefferson looked between us curiously for some reason, but began.

“Until last year we used to keep King Athelstan across the road.”

I stared at her. Had I unknowingly slipped into some parallel universe where that sort of statement actually made sense?

“Mother!”

A scrawny young boy had emerged from the dark rear of the cottage where, presumably, the beds were. He looked to be around five years of age, rather thin but in reasonable condition.

“She gets like this after she's read one of them stories”, the boy said with a put-upon expression on his face. “I'm George Jefferson. King Athelstan was our pet pig; the land across the street used to be open but they built the cottages there last year.”

“That's right”, Mrs. Jefferson said. “And I do _not_ get 'like this', Georgie. You mind your manners!”

“Please!” the boy scoffed. “I had nightmares for a week after that one about the creepy black slime that ate people from the feet up while they slept” (that had to have been 'Moonlighting', I thought, sympathizing with the poor boy). “Every time you get another story in the post, poor Father hares off down to the pub like his life depends on it!”

Our hostess scowled at him but, fortuitously, was distracted by a sudden movement from young George's soon to be sibling (presumably mentioning the stories was disturbing them even before their advent into the world, which would not have surprised me in the least!). John immediately moved to make sure that the lady was all right, and once all was well again she continued.

“Mr. Black who owns Leven Farm, he offered us a deal”, she said. “He said he was a bit short of cash so he couldn't buy King Athelstan right off, but he would keep him on his farm and buy him from us come Christmas. That was kind of him considering we had nowhere else to put him.”

“The pig was taken from the farm?” I asked. She nodded.

“Last week they nicked him along with two others”, she said. “Bold as brass the villains; the place is pretty cut off but they got them away somewhere. Probably on someone's dinner plate already. And with a new mouth to feed we really need the money we would have got for him.”

I thought for a moment.

“This Mr. Black”, I said at last. “What can you tell me about him?”

“Arthur, my husband, knows him more than I do”, she said. “He works down in Barrow Docks where Mr. Black's brother is a foreman, I think. He'll be back this evening.”

“I see”, I said. “I saw a decent coaching-inn in town earlier, The Sun, so the doctor and I will base ourselves there. Should you need us you can send George here to fetch us. We will talk to your husband when he comes home and then take things from there.”

“Do you think King Athelstan could be got back?” she said hopefully.

“I do not know”, I admitted. “As you said, a thief would most likely get rid of the evidence via the breakfast table, a most effective way of covering their tracks. But if I cannot get your pig back I promise that I will endeavour to track down the thieves who stole him and make them pay you his worth, at the very least.”

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I dearly loved John. But occasionally he was wont to say precisely the wrong thing at the wrong time.

“I wonder why she gave the pig such a noble name?” he mused as we walked back to The Sun to obtain rooms for our time here. “It hardly seems fitting, naming a set of future breakfast contents after the first King of England.

John was also increasingly prone to spotting when I was keeping something from him. I was sure that I had not said anything or had any reaction to his observation, but he still looked at me sharply.

“What?” I asked innocently.

“Do not come that with me”, he said warily. “What are you hiding?”

I sighed. He had brought this totally upon himself – but then they do say a trouble shared is a trouble halved. Although in this instance, 'doubled' might have been more appropriate.

“Most likely from 'Shaft', that story my mother wrote about that king's capture of Viking York, which in effect created England”, I said, wishing fervently that technology had advanced sufficiently that it was possible to 'unhear' certain things. “She described in graphic detail how he took twenty of the most handsome Vikings and told them that as they had spent half a century shafting England.....”

I trailed off. From his sudden pallor he had got it.

“Sherlock!”

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I had planned to meet Mr. Arthur Jefferson next to see if he could shed any light on the case, but the Fates dictated otherwise. The landlord Mr. Connors had read some of John's stories and had guessed that we were here to investigate the Case Of The Missing Bacon.

“You're in luck sirs”, he said in his slow country burr. “Mr. Black himself is at the bar, back from the mainland not half an hour ago.”

I smiled covertly in that he viewed Furness as an island and the rest of the county as 'the mainland', guessing from the time that the farmer must have gone to somewhere in the main part of Lancashire. John and I crossed over to the bar where we introduced ourselves to Mr. Donald Black. He was a cheerful young fellow of about thirty years of age, and confirmed what we knew about the missing porcine. Plus he had a little more to add.

“That case abroad where you did not even go to the place and still worked out who did it from the clues was clever”, he said (he was I assume referring to A Scandal In Bohemia). “The doctor here always says you can make something out of nothing.”

“I do not believe I am quite yet capable of defying the laws of physics”, I said with a smile. “Was there something unusual about this theft?”

He scratched his thick blond thatch. I noticed out of the corner of my eye that John was covertly checking his own hair again (he always did that when he was concerned about his getting ever nearer 'thirty-ten' as Miss Thackeray had cheekily called it the other week) but of course said nothing. I was fairly sure that I did not even smirk, although he still looked suspiciously at me.

“They took three pigs”, the farmer said.

“So?” I asked.

“I've got twelve”, he said, “or had twelve. The barn where they were kept is some distance from the house so they could just as easily have taken the lot. Three won't ruin me, but losing the lot might well have.”

He was right. That _was_ strange.

“This is a difficult question in any case”, I said, “but I must ask it. Is there anyone who might have had reason to commit such an act of thievery?”

“Lord Parry might”, he sighed.

“Who is Lord Parry?” I asked.

“He owns the docks where my brother Douggie works”, Mr. Black said. “I did not even know the gentleman except by reputation until about five years back, when I unexpectedly inherited this place.”

“Unexpectedly?” John asked. He nodded.

“My grandfather and uncle died within days of each other”, he said. “The farm had been supposed to go to my uncle but his sons were – still are – a right pair of ne'er-do-wells and it got left to me. Lord Parry was cross because he owns South Point Farm, the place further along the road than mine, and my uncle had agreed to sell Leven to him so he could combine the two.”

“But you do not wish to sell, I presume?” I asked. He nodded.

“Unfortunately the whole thing has dragged in family now”, he said with a sigh. “Douggie is a foreman down there and Lord Parry has been doing everything he can to make his life difficult, I suppose to get back at me for not obliging him. His Lordship's son Mr. Charles has been using his father's influence to make matters still worse. When they built the new houses to the south of the town last year he tried to have the road down to the farm closed off, claiming I could just as easily drive two miles further each time I wanted to leave the place. Fortunately he is the sort of idiot who annoys people every time he opens his mouth, and the Town Council said no.”

I thought for a moment.

“I know that you had an arrangement to buy Mrs. Jefferson's pig King Athelstan after he had been with you for a time”, I said. “Were any other people aware of this?”

He looked surprised at that.

“You are asking if the thieves knew that one of the pigs was not mine?” he asked. “I have no idea but I can hardly think so, and there was no mark on him and he looked similar to all mine. Let alone the fact they only took three, why would they include one from a poor lot like the Jeffersons? Surely no-one can have had anything against them?”

“It is hard on poor Mrs. Jefferson”, I agreed.

To my surprise Mr. Black frowned and drew himself up.

“I may be financially straitened, sir”, he said coldly, “but I would _never_ allow a lady to suffer, let alone one who is expecting a child. My sole failing in this matter, to which I do confess, is not to have thought of that earlier. You may inform Mrs. Jefferson that regardless of whether her animal is recovered I shall still pay her the full price for the creature, and at the agreed time!”

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I managed to placate the annoyed farmer (who I rather admired for his sense of social responsibility, particularly as I knew that many people with much more in life who were not possessed of such morals), and we parted. I made a mental note to make sure that Father supplied him with some covert aid in the future; such integrity needed to be encouraged.

It was only a short time later that Mr. Arthur Jefferson arrived at the tavern, although I suspected that he would be unable to add much to what we already knew. I was however mistaken.

“About the only good thing to come out of the whole mess is that Con banned Mr. Charles and his cronies from this place of an evening!” he sighed. “They were always getting drunk and then setting off round the town to do something daft or other. This daft rhyming thing was the last straw.”

I had a sudden inspiration. John looked at me sharply; he really was getting too good at this.

“What rhyming thing?” I asked as casually as I could.

“There's a woman at the end of our street called Mary-Beth Rigby”, he said. “Contrary Mary we call her because she's always arguing, over anything and everything. They went round her place at midnight and threw seashells all over her nice neat garden of which she's always boasting. They were seen clambering over her fence afterwards but the local police are in Lord Parry's pocket.”

“Why would they do a stupid thing like that?” John asked.

“Because of the nursery rhyme”, I said. “How does your garden grow, with silver bells and cockle shells.”

Mr. Jefferson nodded.

“Then it was poor old Miss Caldwell”, he said. “No proof it was them that time but it was their sort of thing. She has a red cloak and lives out of town; one of them wore some sort of wolf costume and leapt out at her from behind a tree. Poor girl fainted clean away.”

“Little Red Riding Hood”, I said. “It all begins to make sense.”

I could see that it was not yet making sense to John, who was bordering dangerously on the edge of another adorable pout.

“The only other odd thing was someone stole Mrs. Featherstone's goat Billy” he said, “then took him out of town and tied him up in a field for some reason. But I don't see how that has anything to do with a nursery rhyme.”

“I can”, I said. “Rowley Powley, later better known as George Porgie, was in its original form related to a goat who had been named for King Charles the Second.”

“Another animal named after a king”, John mused. I smiled.

“Named supposedly because he shared that monarch's sexual appetite”, I said.

Mr. Jefferson winced but was distracted by the arrival of his son George, who burst into the tavern surprisingly loudly for someone of his small size. He did not have to say anything; one look at his face told his reason for being here. John rose and walked over to him, but Mr. Jefferson hesitated.

“The doctor would _never_ charge for treating a friend of my mother”, I assured him. “Go be with your wife, sir.”

He looked at me gratefully and they all hurried off.

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While John was easing the passage of the next Jefferson into the world I decided to test a theory and see if I could bring this case to a sudden and happy conclusion. I would however need help. As the post-office was closed I went to the station where they were able to send off the telegram I required. We were not that far from the border with Cumberland and hence our old friends Inspector Macdonald and Constable Smith, or at least what was left of the latter by now. Then I returned to the tavern and waited. Sure enough, an answer to my telegram reached me before I turned in for the night and I went to bed happy.

Fairly happy. My bed was of course missing something quite important.

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The following morning young George Jefferson arrived at the tavern to inform me that his brother or sister did not seem overly inclined to make an appearance just yet, so poor John was still in Argyll Street. Thankfully I was soon joined by four large gentlemen at the tavern whom I promised to stand drinks once we were done with our task. 

The five of us took two a cart out of the town and headed south, eventually reaching Mr. Black's farm which was indeed a fair-sized one. There we picked up a couple of his farm-hands and continuing past it we soon reached the much smaller South Point Farm which as its name had suggested lay on a headland.

I had hoped that we might find the farmer at home but as it turned out we did rather better. A supercilious-looking young fellow off about thirty years of age was just leaving the place in a well-appointed carriage. He looked down on me from his perch, then more warily at the four large policemen behind me.

“Who or what are _you_ , sir?” he demanded.

“I am Mr. Sherlock Holmes”, I said, “and I would wager that _you_ are Mr. Charles Parry, here to check up on your recent act of thievery or possibly even to plan your next act of rank childishness.”

He looked disdainfully at me.

“I have no idea what you mean”, he said loftily. “Out of my way, unless you wish me to run you over.”

“If I go into this farm”, I said with a smile as I thought of what I had learned earlier that day, “I will surely find three pigs that have no right to be here. Having examined the roads in this area I know that it would have been exceptionally difficult, especially for three young idiots in their cups, to have directed three pigs along the road north from Leven Farm as it passes several houses. However it was much easier to move them south to the farm owned by your father, where they have been hidden ever since.”

“This is private property”, Mr. Parry said haughtily (I noted that he did not deny my assertion). “You have no rights here. Who are these men?”

“I rather think that the uniforms might tell even _you_ that!” I retorted. 

“They are not from round here”, Mr. Parry said. “I know George and Fred.”

“It is easy to know someone who is in your father's pocket”, I agreed. “These fine men are from the Cumberland and Westmorland Constabulary.”

“Then they have no business here”, Mr. Parry said shortly. “This sir, in case you have not noticed, is _Lancashire!”_

“I am fully aware of my county boundaries, _sir_ ”, I shot back. “But police forces do have the right to cross such boundaries if they have good cause to believe that stolen property is being maintained somewhere beyond them, provided that they inform the local constabulary first.”

“Fred told me nothing about this”, Mr. Parry said warily.

“Perhaps the letter has not reached him yet”, I said airily. “I believe that the postal service is somewhat reduced at weekends. Gentlemen?”

The police-officers and farm-hands off towards the farmhouse. I knew full well what they would find in one of the barns.

“My father will be having words with you about this!” Mr. Parry said hotly.

I smiled dangerously.

“I would be rather more concerned about your _mother_ , sir.”

He looked at me in confusion.

“What has she to do with any of this?” he demanded.

“Well, it turns out that she and the wife of the owner of one of the pigs you stole when you were doing 'Three Little Pigs' have something in common”, I grinned. “They are both enamoured of the writings of my own dear mother, who writes under the pseudonym Fidelia Raleigh.”

He went deathly pale.

“L... l... like 'Secret Army'?” he gasped in horror. “The nightmare about the Pharaoh and his eighty Nubian slaves?”

_(I had missed that one. For which I was truly thankful!)_

“The very same”, I said, making a mental note to make sure that I continued to 'miss' that story. “I shall also be encouraging her to write to your mother, and to suggest that she 'share' those stories more widely among her family.”

He yelped in horror and banged the roof of his carriage, which was driven away at speed. I smiled as I watched him go. Although perhaps I could not be that cruel, even to him.

On the other hand, they do say that sharing is caring!

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With the help of the farm-hands we drove the stolen animals to Mr. Black's farm. I paid them both then saw the officers back to the tavern where I stood them all a drink, making a mental note that I owed their former co-worker Mr. Fraser MacDonald one as well for his assistance. One of them men grinned as he told me that Constable Smith would have come along himself 'but he has trouble walking just now, sir', which was both terrible of him and not surprising in the least. Then I hurried off to Argyll Street where I arrived to find that the latest Jefferson had finally made his arrival. John looked exhausted but happy, and the proud parents were clearly delighted at having a second son.

“He is to be Arthur after me”, Mr. Jefferson said proudly. 

“Maybe Athelstan as a middle name?” his wife suggested.

“That would make him A.A.”, Mr. Jefferson pointed out. “I know that boys with initials like that get teased. How about Stanley? That's a town not far from where I grew up, and I always liked the name.”

That sounds wonderful”, his wife said, slumping back into her chair clearly exhausted after all her labours. “Arthur Stanley Jefferson.”

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Postscriptum: The more learnéd reader will now realize why this particular case was originally unpublished, and not just because of its relatively minor importance. Arthur Stanley Jefferson would go on to acquire a sister and two more brothers, but more significantly he would become famous for his acting career the following century in some of the best 'movies' ever made. But not before he had changed his name since his original choice of 'Stan Jefferson' was deemed unlucky as it had thirteen letters in it. He chose to be known instead as Stan Laurel, and in his long and glittering career with the equally talented Mr. Oliver Hardy he established a legacy of laughter and joy that contributed so much to the sum of human happiness.

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	11. Case 172: The Adventure Of The Bath Salts ☼

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1890\. It is all hands on deck to protect the great detective as Professor Moriarty intensifies his efforts to have his rival removed from the face of the earth. Sherlock's stepbrother Campbell learns that someone in the docks is taking an interest in the great detective and sets out to learn why.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: Mention of acid attacks.

_[Narration by Mr. Campbell Kerr, Esquire]_

I like to think that my late father's business has, despite his 'forgetting' to mention to me just what that business was before he passed, gone from strength to strength under my stewardship, but as with all things that in itself has brought problems. Of course now I have Alan to share the load and to help me relax of an evening, but it was still a stretch at times (Alan is rather well-endowed despite his slender build) and adding new houses – I mean Debating Societies – to the empire only made things harder.

Alan has just made a bad joke about things getting harder. I am almost looking forward to retirement so I can make the saucy boy pay for that sort of remark except that he is over a decade my junior and the effort might well end me before it does him. Ah well, what must be must be; at least I will go out with a smile on my face – even if there will certainly be a smirk on his, the bastard!

I had been fortunate in that the groups of houses at the eastern and western ends of our empire were each run by highly trustworthy deputies, in whom I had complete confidence. To the west there was Sweyn Godfreyson, who Alan and I were training up to replace me once we did finally head off to that country cottage and my permanent sexual exhaustion, while to the east was Steve Sawyer, a burly London docker whose father had been in the business when I had taken it over. Jack Sawyer had sadly died young – far too young – and his bull-headed son had at first resented not being allowed to start with us until he was eighteen _and_ looked it, a rule I have in place to stop any of my 'boys' being actual boys. I have been greatly helped in that by my stepbrother Sherlock who put me in touch with a brilliant fellow called Mr. Rosenstern who could spot any faked documents with ease, something which had proved useful on more than one occasion. 

I am also lucky in that while Sweyn and Steve are chalk and cheese – Sweyn is your typical striking Viking; tall blond and handsome while Steve is a very solid ordinary-looking fellow who has great stamina, and both have a long list of satisfied if exhausted clients – they are both great at their jobs. The other thing in which they do not differ is their skin colour; Steve is if anything even paler than his Viking co-worker though with his size few comment on that, and those of clients that do normally limp away afterwards somewhat wiser if sorer. Fortunately he is also very much a second-in-command sort of fellow and has no problem with the fact that Sweyn rather than him will replace me some time soon. 

Steve was also not the sort to make a fuss without a good reason, so when he came to see me one day over what seemed a trifling matter I knew that there was definitely something to it.

“I don't like the new fellow, Martin”, he said. 

I was surprised. For all that he looked a complete thug of the sort you would dread seeing coming down an alley towards you, Steve was an amiable fellow and comments on his appearance aside it took a lot to get on the wrong side of him. I had hardly ever heard him say a bad word against anyone, even some of then men whose applications he had refused (and who had of course then tried to go through me, as if he had not warned me before interviewing them).

“The one who got beaten up the other day?” I asked. 'Mickie' Martin was a docker like Steve and had recently joined us; he had been attacked at his work rather than when working for us or I would have had something to say about it, but I had learned that it had been a work-related matter so I had let it rest.

Steve shook his head. 

“It was the day after I ran into our Doctor Watson in the docks”, he said. “He was there to treat one of the fellows who'd had an injury, and I told him that he should call by the house to pick up Mr. Holmes's salts later.”

“Salts?” I asked, confused. 

“Bath salts”, he said. “I do some odd-job work for Mr. Green who owns a shop by the docks that sells them; just a bit of loading and unloading when he has a rush order in. His wife doesn't like me though and said he wasn't to pay me, so we got round it by his giving me some of his goods, including the salts which I pass on to Mr. Holmes. Doctor Watson gave me the idea when he said how hard it was to get the ones his friend likes.”

I thought about that for a moment.

“Did Doctor Watson take the salts with him when he called?” I asked. He shook his head.

“As I said the times Mr. Green needs me are pretty irregular”, he said, “so I always take them back to the house until one of the boys needs treatment. If they don't, I send them round anyway after a few days. Mike suddenly having that attack – I don't like it, sir.”

I could see at once why Steve had been suspicious. And he had likely been right so to be.

“Did you have any salts in the house when Martin was beaten up?” I asked.

“No”, he said, “but that was Wednesday. I got some the next day and I'm sure Mick knew that I was on call that day before he had his attack; he has this habit of listening in to people's conversations. I knew that some bastard out there is targeting Mr. Holmes so I didn't ask the doctor to come round. He'd left me a card with the name of a friend of his for emergencies, a Doctor Greenwood, so I sent a note to him asking if he might call when he had a spare minute.”

That at least was good. Doctor Greenwood was one of the best doctors in town, I knew, and he often treated my 'boys' as part of his philanthropic work. Also quite a looker but happily married with a growing family, and Alan always got madly jealous if I so much as looked at another man; the last time he had not let me out of our bedroom for a whole day. Then again.....

“Was Martin disappointed at that?” I asked, dragging myself away from some rather pleasant thoughts.

“I wasn't there”, he admitted, “but I've a feeling he may have been.”

I had that same feeling.

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Steve and I talked some more, then I left to visit my stepbrother and told him what I suspected. He was alone for once, his friend having a day at his surgery.

“I think that you are right”, he said firmly, “and either way I must reward Steve for his perspicacity. We must make sure that if this is what we think, the attackers are given the opportunity to put their necks in the noose.”

He looked pointedly at me. He knew that much as I tried to make the best of it, mine was a rough business and justice was sometimes rougher. As it would likely be in this case.

“As you say, if it is that then I shall not stand in the way of my 'boys'”, I said. “I only ask that justice is the same for all; that is what they expect of me.”

“I shall have Miss St. Leger make some inquiries into your Mr. Martin”, he said. “I might as well buy that bakery across from her offices for the amount of times I send her jam cream fingers from there!”

I smiled at that.

“Given the amount of business that she provides them with”, I said, “I doubt that even you could afford it, brother!”

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There were few certainties in London, but among them were the eternal fog, dishonest politicos down Westminster way, the sun rising in the east and Miss Clementine St. Leger finding things out. I was not surprised to receive a letter from Sherlock the next day stating that Mike Martin's uncle whom he lived with, an ambitious if incompetent civil service clerk, had recently opened a channel of communication with one Professor Moriarty. And that Mickie had been there when he and the villain had met.

“Oh Mickie”, I sighed, shaking my head at Alan. “You poor, foolish boy. No-one can save you now.”

He came and sat with me, knowing instinctively that I wanted to hold him. I wrapped my arms around his impressive figure and pulled him close, sighing happily. I was so damn lucky!

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Sherlock had arranged for Steve's friend to need his services the following Thursday, so there was a batch of salts ready for when Doctor Watson called round. Steve had sent round to the boys that he would be coming and several of them had asked to see him, so he would be there for a while. He made a point of leaving the salts by the door for the doctor to collect on his way out then positioned himself just inside the kitchen where he could see anyone approaching them.

His telegram reached me before the doctor reached the science laboratory to which he had taken the salts. It contained simply the word 'Yes'.

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Four days later, I went to see Sherlock. Doctor Watson admitted me and we all stared grimly at the headline in the 'Times'. A civil service clerk, one Mr. Michael Martin, had been attacked while visiting a Turkish bath and deliberately held under water while a toxic mix of chemicals had been poured in with him, scarring his entire body. Worse, it had emerged that his nephew of the same name had been subject to the same attack having been seized while walking back to his own rooms, and had been held somewhere only to be released today. And that was not the worst of it; leaked records showed that they had planned the same thing for the consulting detective Mr. Sherlock Holmes.

Apparently 'someone' had got to them first.

“Brutal but effective”, I said coldly. “Any Londoner thinking of working with the professor in an attack on you would think twice now, brother.”

“Your boys are all right after that?” the doctor asked. I nodded.

“They wanted to do worse when they found out”, I said, “but they understood that this would be more effective in warning off others. Thank you for paying them, Sherlock; I am sure you know they would have done it for free given the circumstances.”

“I did send to the elder Mr. Martin to offer him the chance to co-operate”, Sherlock said sadly. “If he had agreed then we might have set back the professor's operations somewhat; not the killer blow that we need but at least something. Instead he chose the side of evil, despite my warning that he would pay for it one day. That day came sooner than he anticipated.”

He handed me an envelope for Steve which I could see contained several notes. That was one of the many things that was so good about my brother, in that he looked after what so many wrongly called 'the lower orders'. And we in those orders would strive to protect him in his current battle.

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	12. Interlude: Floored

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1890\. Sound can travel down as well as up....

_[Narration by Mr. Lucifer Garrick, Esquire]_

It was cold for the end of May, I thought, as I read through my latest reports on Moriarty. I had brought them home after they had arrived on my desk just two minutes before my leaving time, and with a hot man waiting for me I was not prepared to delay my departure.

Two muscular black arms wrapped themselves around me, and I sighed happily as I leaned back into Benji's embrace. I was almost as tall as him but somehow his much greater muscle mass was able to engulf me, and I was glad to be engulfed. As well as very thoroughly shafted!

“Bringing work home, Mr. Lucifer sir?” he said, and I could hear the disapproval in his tone.

“It was either that or wait another hour before I could get home and be impaled on the Banjax”, I sighed. “Some problems cannot wait, I am afraid.”

He said nothing but from the slight tensing in his body (which given my current position I felt inside and out!) I knew that he understood. For all that he could play the dumb big man Benji was highly intelligent – he had recently taken to reading Shakespeare while he was over here. Well, having me try to read it while I was impaled on the Banjax! At least I think that it was Shakespeare; it could have been the local business directory for all that I knew.

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Mercifully it was some little time later and we were dressed when it happened. Benji was ready to depart – there may or may not have been a certain amount of kissing – when a cough from the doorway caught us both off-guard and I felt chilled as my lover backed away from me quickly. Looking round I was more than a little surprised to see Adam, my cousin Carl's son who..... oh Lord no!

Like an express train at speed the memory came back to me. The teenager nodded.

“Father _did_ remind you that I was staying the night because he and Mother were having the whole house cleaned through”, the boy said, looking at us both with lofty disapproval.

“You.... you were in the house all night?” I said in what may or may not have been a panicked tone. And just possibly a high-pitched one.

He shook his head at me.

“I used Father's key for the basement”, he said. “And even through two floors I could still hear the pair of you going at it all night!” He shook his head at Benji. “Honestly sir, do you not sleep?” 

“Mr. Lucifer has the stamina to keep 'up' with me”, grinned the horny bastard alongside me. I glared at him; I could almost hear the unspoken 'for someone in his forties'! 

“Do I not know it!” Adam sighed. “I shall be heading off to my house; they will be finished by now. Goodbye Uncle Lucifer. Goodbye, Uncle Ben.”

He came over and shook my hand, then shook Benji's (which of course made the fruiterer blubber with happiness, the sap!), then shot us both another disapproving look before leaving. I smiled happily; it was so wonderful that he accepted my lover as...... why was the behemoth looking at me like that?

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Apparently 'someone' was not quite ready to depart after all. Poor Adam probably heard us from the street! Ah well.

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	13. Case 173: The Adventure Of The Deadly Drops ☼

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1890\. Sherlock thinks that by safeguarding his supplies of bacon and coffee he can prevent any poisoning attempt aimed at 221B. He is wrong – nearly fatally so!

_[Narration by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire]_

I had I knew been exceptionally lucky that the sharp observational skills of Mr. Steve Sawyer had spared me a vicious attack through the medium of my beloved bath salts. Indeed the whole episode forced me to review (as I really should have done much sooner) as to what other ways I might come under attack from the villainous Moriarty. 

The two most obvious were coffee and bacon, both of which I had some small liking for (John is coughing for some strange reason) and which might easily be poisoned. I was sure that Moriarty would not care if he also took out those close to me as well; concern for human life was, like having a conscience, an alien concept to him. Hence I made sure that the supplies of both were secure after which I could sit back and relax.

I had however made a nearly fatal mistake.

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I was surprised if pleased to have a visit from Steve a week or so after the conclusion to the bath salts matter. He thanked me for my generosity in rewarding him for his information – he had wanted to go and see his brother who lived up in Middlesbrough and my money had paid for his trip and hotel stay – then he said that something else had come up which he thought might need my attention.

“It's a bit embarrassing, sirs”, he said (I liked it that unlike so many of his so-called 'social betters' he addressed John as well as me). “It concerns Mr. Fair.”

I have to say that I was surprised. The aptly-named Mr. Frederick Fair was that rare thing, a philanthropic businessman _(sic)_ who ran a food-importing warehouse in the docks where Steve worked. It was only a small business but he was renowned for treating his workforce generously, often to the annoyance of other more Scrooge-like employers. In short he was the last person that I would have expected any trouble from.

“Not him personally, of course”, Steve said. “See, we had a new boy start with my company recently. Name of Jake; they call him the Rake because he's tall and skinny. His brother works for Mr. Fair the lucky sod – sorry sirs - and he overheard someone talk about about shipping in a fellow to 'take out that Mr. Holmes'.”

“Did this source hear any more?” I asked.

“No sir”, Steve said, “but he told Jake that the boat only ever sailed to and from ports in Ireland.”

“I must thank this Jake for being so helpful”, I said.

The burly docker grinned.

“Already did that for you, sir”, he said. _“Three times!”_

I just shook my head at him. Honestly, some men these days!

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One of the reasons why Mr. Fair was so popular was that, as one might expect, some of the foodstuffs he imported were while not spoiled also not of sufficient quality to be forwarded to the shops that he supplied. Normally these 'almost-goods' would have been thrown away, but Mr. Fair allowed his workers to take them home (I should note that some other employers did that as well but they then deducted money from their workers' wages to make up for their 'generosity'). Steve's source had identified the ship for me so I sent that information to Miss St. Leger then set off to a small house in St. James's. Unfortunately I could not take John because I was not sure if the gentleman who I was visiting would be accepting of his presence, and given the circumstances it was most definitely better to be safe than sorry.

Mr. Alfred Bow was one of the richest men in London, which would have made the small (if not cramped) and nondescript house I arrived at seem puzzling to anyone who knew that fact. He was also the gentleman whose offices I had used in the Gotham case, when a certain Nottinghamshire gentleman had declined my advice to leave the country for his foul actions and was now six foot under it, doubtless being of much more use pushing up daisies than he had been while alive. For Mr. Bow was the chief assassin of London Town, one of the four most deadly men in the metropolis. 

Typically, his first question was to ask why I had not brought John!

“I never do when making first visits to gentlemen like yourself, sir”, I said. “That would seem presumptuous, although I have noted that many who might once have been wary of him now seem to expect us to be joined at the hip! Thank you most kindly for your service in Nottinghamshire; I appreciate that like me you prefer to be in the capital rather than the provinces.”

The assassin looked at ,me shrewdly. The unpleasant thought crossed my mind that if he wished me dead, I would never know about it until I was standing before the pearly gates.”

“It must be serious, sir”, he said with a slight smile. “You know as well as many that I shun society and do not usually welcome people to my house – at least, those who wish to leave it alive.”

“I fear that it may be deadly serious, sir”, I said, managing not to shudder. “I am here to ask you about the possibility of an Irish assassin in England.”

He looked at me as if I had suddenly started speaking in Swahili! It was hard to think of this seemingly harmless elderly gentleman who looked as if he belonged more in a dusty office somewhere than the 'direct removal' business as he preferred to call it but as I more than most knew, appearances were often deceptive.

“An _Irish_ assassin?” he asked, sounding utterly incredulous. _”Here?_ In _England?”_

“The Irish do have assassins?” I asked, surprised at his tone.

“Some decent ones”, he said, “the leading three of whom I know quite well. But they would _never_ come to England without my knowledge, Mr. Holmes. I am sure of that!”

“Why not?” I asked. “If you do not mind me asking?”

He smiled at me.

“I am sorry”, he said. “Like you, I find it difficult that those outside my own trade do not always see the rules that we operate by. Assassins are what you might call a regional closed shop. For example, your Nottinghamshire matter. If that had happened in Wales or Scotland say, I would have first have to have contacted the assassins there to let them know that I had been commissioned to enter their territory and effect a direct removal. Not to do so would make the whole business _quite_ insupportable!”

“I suppose that no amount of money would persuade them otherwise?” I ventured.

“You are thinking of Professor Moriarty”, he said shrewdly. “You forget your own blood, sir.”

“Pardon?” I said, confused.

“You are part-Irish”, he pointed out. “No assassin in these islands would take out a commission against you, let alone the fact that it is common knowledge that I regard you favourably. There is a man – I will not call him gentleman for he is none – over in France who might, but then he is _French!”_

I smiled at the disdain in his voice.

“I will admit however”, he went on, “that I am concerned about Mr. Coborn. As you know sir I am shortly to retire, and he has applied to be considered as one of our little group. We shall have to reject his application; I fear that he does not have the scruples needed to conduct himself properly in what is the ultimate serious business. He is away in Russia just now and I will be having him watched when he does return. If he takes his rejection as I fear he might, then he will swiftly find himself at the wrong end of our little business.”

“A source of mine said that he had heard that someone who was being brought over from Ireland was here to, and I quote, take me out”, I said. “I very much doubt that they meant it in the sense of 'to dinner'.”

He frowned at that.

“Are you sure that that is that what was actually _said?”_ he asked.

“It is what I was told”, I said. “Why?”

He suddenly looked worried. This had to be bad!

“Only, I have used that ruse myself more than one time”, he said. “Declaring publicly that I was going to take out Mr. X, and then very quietly adding another word or so to make it 'Mr. X's friend'.”

I went pale. _John!_

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I made it back to Baker Street and was panting when I raced into our rooms to thankfully find John sat there, safe and well if a little surprised at my noisy entrance.

“I only just got back”, he said. “A client at the other end of Baker Street, and they not only paid cash but gave me that.”

He gestured to a large paper bag on the sideboard.

“What is it?” I asked warily, fervently glad that the thing was not ticking.

“Chocolate drops”, he said. “The patient's brother had brought them round for his son, but both men are allergic so he said that I could have them.”

“I will wager a penny to a pound that they are poisoned!” I said firmly. “Damn Moriarty! I thought that he understood not to go after friends and family, but apparently not.”

He looked understandably concerned, and I went to get my science set.

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The drops were heavily dosed with a deadly but tasteless poison, and likely just one of them would have been the end of John. I was tempted to throw the whole damn lot of the things away, but this sort of action necessitated another reminder to my enemy that there would be severe penalties for breaching the rules of this 'game'. A very firm reminder. I sent to Miss St. Leger for some information and to Mr. Bow for a rather unusual request.

The next day the 'Times' was somewhat puzzled to report that an American called Mr. Corden who had recently arrived to England after a short stay in Ireland had been found dead at his lodgings in Lower Baker Street. Bizarrely he seemed to have been murdered by having been force-fed poisoned chocolate drops. How very strange.

Miss St. Leger confirmed that Steve's friend Jake and his brother were not in on this devious plot, and I suitably rewarded all three of them. Indeed Jake became Steve's lover although he remained a rake of a fellow, almost all of whose clients asked why he was underfed before he demonstrated that he was not 'under' in the most important area (my stepbrother Campbell could still not refrain from oversharing some things, worse luck!). Worse, the bastard mentioned Jake to my mother who promptly came up with 'Dino-Rod', a story about an insatiable plumber who did rather more for his clients than just clear their blockages.

On the plus side I managed to avoid that horror which was read to Randall on a visit to home (hah!). And having both Jake and Steve around would ultimately prove more than useful, as one day I would need of both gentlemen in one of my darkest cases.

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	14. Case 174: The Adventure Of The Red-Headed League

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1890\. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing – it can get you blown to kingdom come! A case of inter-business rivalry turns explosive as Sherlock has to battle Moriarty for the support of someone influential. Or does he?

_Narration by Doctor John Watson, M.D.]_

I glared at the hefty manuscript of our adventure with the Goode Brothers, on which I now only had to do a final grammar and spelling check on before submitting it to the 'Strand' magazine. It had been one of my hardest stories yet to get right plus my writer's block had made me grumpy and ill-tempered at both work and home. The magazine had been pestering me for it throughout spring; now we were at the start of August and it still was not done. And worst of all Sherlock's lounge-lizard of a brother was due here any minute, which while it might mean another case that would also subject me to being in the same room as him.

I wondered if I had time to summon Lady Holmes. I could even ask her to bring along her latest crime against literature.....

Someone was shaking his head at me from across the room. I scowled at him; he really had to stop with the mind-reading!

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Sherlock and his irritating brother talked only briefly about our recent cases. Mr. Randall Holmes was very clearly suspicious about the case involving Huret the Boulevard assassin who had somehow resisted all efforts to track him down having disappeared into England disguised as a Cistercian monk, but fortunately more pressing matters had forced him to turn his attentions elsewhere. I noted that he looked quite pale, doubtless the result of having to spend time in hospital, an experience surely made infinitely worse because his mother had demanded that as he was spending so much time resting he might as well edit some of her stories for her. Sherlock, the bastard, had suggested that.

I _liked_ my friend!

“We have a serious problem”, the lounge-lizard scowled from the comfort of the fireside chair. It may have been the middle of summer but it seemed that someone had forgotten to inform the British weather and it was uncommonly cold. I felt annoyed that once again our guest was assuming his brother's assistance as if it was some right, whereas Sherlock always politely requested his elder sibling's aid when he needed it, never demanding it. Indeed, on one or two occasions in the past it had not been forthcoming without some 'prodding' by my friend (I still wondered about that 'radish'). Although after the Vipers Bay case his brother had been.... fractionally less obnoxious. Very fractionally.

I smiled at the pleasant memory and 'missed' a sharp look from the resident blue-eyed wiseacre in the room. 

“What is it?” Sherlock asked, shaking his head at me and turning back to the visiting nuisance.

“Swordland's”, his brother said heavily.

Miss St. Leger's detective agency, I remembered, run by the unseen Mr. William Swordland. It was strange that, our noble Queen included since her late husband's passing nearly three decades back, there seemed to be a rule that the most powerful people in society were often the least seen. 

I might have imagined it, but there seemed to have been the briefest pause before Sherlock spoke again.

“What of them?” he asked.

“Some of Mr. William Swordland's people apparently think that they should supply information only to Professor Moriarty as he is 'the coming man”, our visitor lamented. “It would be a complete disaster!”

“Why?” I asked. 

Sherlock turned to me but not before shooting his brother a warning look. Mr. Randall Holmes very clearly had make an effort to suppress whatever sharp comment he had been about to utter. I did not have to work hard at not bothering to suppress a smirk.

“Mr. William Swordland has until now always kept his business strictly neutral”, Sherlock explained, giving me a look of only the slightest reproof. “However many of his employees are of course tempted by the money that the professor has at his command. They would not be so bold as to tell the owner of the company what to do, but their opinions are of course known to them.”

“He would allow that?” I asked dubiously.

“Moriarty has divided even his own criminal fraternity with his actions”, Sherlock said. “Queen Molly continues to refuse to have anything to do with him despite his efforts to patch things up with her, and after he disposed of Mr. Jolling in the mincing-machine the city's other top criminals have moved away from him.”

“Some things disgust even vermin!” Mr. Randall Holmes agreed.

“Is it perhaps because of the Red-Headed League?” Sherlock wondered.

“What on earth are they?” I asked. I was learning all sorts of new things today.

“A potential rival to Swordland's if they ever become established”, Mr. Randall Holmes explained. “It _claims_ to be descended from one of those infernal Italian family things, the Borgias and all that. Because people who are different always got picked on – still do, if it comes to that – the League was set up to defend the interests of gingers in society. Over time it began using information as leverage and now it has shown up in London. That may be why Swordland's might be ready to abandon their neutrality; they could perceive a League siding with the professor to be a threat.” 

“If Moriarty gains preferential access to the sort of information that either organization possesses, it would indeed be a disaster of the first magnitude”, Sherlock said. “I am surprised that the villain has not moved against the League already, in an effort to try to win Mr. William Swordland over.”

“He most likely has”, his brother said. “The League had got itself an office in Whitechapel but it was burnt to the ground just days after opening. There was a huge red number '1' on the floor which, fortunately, turned out to be just red paint; you never know with foreigners! A second set of offices in the Minories met a similar end a few days later except this time there was a big red '3' on a wall.”

Sherlock waited for me to note down that information before speaking. 

“Has anyone tried to approach Mr. William Swordland about this?” he asked. His brother shook his head.

“You know as well as I do that no-one ever 'approaches' Mr. William Swordland”, our visitor said pointedly. “At least not before getting past the ferocious Miss St. Leger! Lord but that woman can move fast!”

Miss St. Leger rose yet another notch in my estimation and I made a mental note to buy her an extra jam cream finger for her 'efforts'. And someone could really stop shaking their head at me like that!

“Miss St. Leger is despite her seemingly lowly position possibly the third-most influential lady in the capital, after our two Queens”, Sherlock said, smiling slightly for some reason. “I did think that her continued position has been something of a surprise, not just for her relative lack of years but that Mr. Swordland had usually only employed secretaries for one month at a time until she arrived. Yet she has held the post for some years now, and is clearly a highly capable lady. Just what did you do to make her hit you, Randall?”

His brother scowled at him.

“In a city this size I suppose it is the law of averages that not every woman can fully appreciate my charms”, he said loftily. “She must have misinterpreted my intentions.”

Sherlock just looked at him. He growled in annoyance.

“Damnation, what sort of woman stamps on a fellow when he she has knocked him down to the ground?”

Sherlock smirked.

“After taking his legs out from under him, Miss St. Leger decided to put a crimp in Randall's favourite activity”, he explained.

I made a mental note to upgrade Miss St. Leger's gift to a full box of pastries. Despite the resident wiseacre's disapproving look.

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Over the following week four more attempts by the Red-Headed League to set up offices in the city went up in flames. Or more accurately the first three went up in flames while the fourth one ended when someone blew up the whole (mercifully empty) building! In each case a red painted number was left at the scene; a '5', an '8', a '9' and an '18'. The attacker did not seem to be overly mathematical, I thought, although presumably those numbers must have meant something. 

Eight days after the lounge-lizard's visit, an invitation arrived at Baker Street. Sherlock had been making some inquiries into the matter but had not yet shared any findings with me, and now he looked oddly perplexed.

“It is to attend a meeting with Miss St. Leger”, he said. “I quote, 'it is also advised that a representative of Mr. James Moriarty will be attending this meeting as our organization considers its future policies towards certain groupings in this city. Kindly note that the bringing of weapons in any shape or form will _not_ be well received'.”

“So they have summoned you”, I said. “I wonder why.”

He looked at me strangely.

“There was no name on the message so I opened it”, he said. “Miss St. Leger wishes to speak to _you!”_

I gulped.

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The following day I duly went to Swordland's, a nondescript building in a row of shops not far from the Angel, Islington. I was immediately shown up to the offices of Mr. Swordland; Miss St. Leger herself had a small outer office that was reasonably sized, dominated by an impressive studded oak door with the name of the company owner on it on a large and gleaming brass plate (the thing would have befitted a medieval castle, I thought). There were also three of those chairs lined up by the wall, of the sort that I knew sank almost to the floor if one tried to sit in them (we kept some at the surgery for our more 'difficult' clients), a set of filing cabinets and a bookcase full of mostly second-hand books. Miss St. Leger gestured me towards one of the two far more sturdy chairs across the table from her and I sat down obediently. 

About five minutes later a blond fellow was announced as 'Mr. Elias Evans' by a boy whom I did not even see. The newcomer was a tall blond man of about my age and had a mean-looking pinched face. He glared at me but did not speak.

“I will not make the introductions lengthy”, our hostess said, “because I am sure that the two of you wish to have as little to do with each other as possible. Mr. Elias Evans, Doctor John Watson. Time is money gentlemen, so let us keep this brief.”

I snapped to attention.

“A decision has been taken that, with the current instability caused by the advent of a potential rival in the city, our company's long-established position of neutrality will no longer suffice. This is what is going to happen. You are each going to take a dossier back with you to your respective masters. Two cabs are being held outside, one for each of you, and although the doctor will be leaving some eight minutes after you Mr. Evans, neither of you will be allowed to leave your cab until you reach your destination _and_ Big Ben strikes the final stroke of two. We must have fairness above all else.”

I nodded, noting my opponent's smirk.

“Oh, and Mr. Evans”, she said warningly, “please note that you will both be watched every step of the way back. If you try to stop and telegraph the information ahead as I am sure your employer suggested, we shall know. If that happens, we shall _not_ be pleased – by which I mean that _you_ will not live to see this evening's sunset!”

The smirk vanished at once. Even I shuddered.

“The dossier will present a challenge to your masters, the answer to which is a whole number”, the lady continued. “When you or they think to have solved it, you and/or your agents may come and tell me in person or you may send a telegram containing your answer. The first communication by either method will be accepted and considered. However – and this is of great import - once we have received your answer by either method you must then follow it up by stating your reasons to me in person _within one hour_. An incorrect number, a delay _or_ a failed reasoning means a forfeit, upon which your opponent will automatically win. The prize will be that Swordland's will exclusively provide select information to whichever side wins and will provide none to the losing side for a minimum period of five years.”

“That sounds fair”, Mr. Evans said. “Anything else?”

She looked at him pointedly.

“Although I should not have to say this, I will”, she said firmly. _“Your_ employer in particular, Mr. Evans, may consider that a pre-emptive strike either immediately or in the event of a failed guess might be in his best interests. Believe me, it would so not be the case.” 

Her voice turned cold, and I flinched. 

“There is a _huge_ dossier on the activities of not just your employer but you yourself. Including, I might add, a certain incident in Tulse Hill last year concerning a certain brothel run by the late Mr. and Mrs. Peasegood which features quite prominently. I consider myself quite broad-minded in this day and age, but even I had to take a stiff drink after reading _that!”_

My opponent turned bright red. Miss St. Leger pulled out a watch.

“Mr. Evans, you will leave”, she said. “Remember, not only your cab-drivers but certain other of our agents will be watching you both - _the whole time!”_

The blond fellow grabbed one of the two huge dossiers on the table and left hurriedly. I sat back and waited for the time to elapse.

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I had to wait what seemed like an eternity in the cab once we were back at Baker Street, although I knew from my watch that it was only six minutes, Once I had raced up to our rooms I gave Sherlock the dossier that I had been provided with.

“Surely we have the advantage?” I pressed. “Professor Moriarty has no-one that he can call on with your abilities?”

“Except that if we get it wrong, then we forfeit and the Professor wins”, he fretted. “I must be one hundred per cent confident of our answer before supplying it to Miss St. Leger. _He_ may feel that he can take a chance.”

The dossier contained one immediate surprise – a note stating that the attacks on the Red-Headed League had not as we had thought been the work of our rival but of Swordland's itself, whose owner had not taken kindly to attempts to 'encroach on their turf'. There were three other items, the first of which was a school primer which unrolled to reveal the alphabet and punctuation marks along the top, the numbers one to forty along the bottom, and pictures of various Greek myths along the middle. There was also a standard dictionary and a small envelope containing a cigarette-card of an ironclad ship, the 'H.M.S. Bellerophon'.

“If the answer is a number then perhaps we may take it that the six numbers found in the Red-Headed League's buildings were the start of some sort of series”, Sherlock said. “We have 1, 3, 5, 8, 9 and 18.”

“I thought that when the attacks were happening but the sequence does not make sense”, I frowned. “The gaps are 2, 2, 3, 1 and 9. It is neither arithmetic or geometric.”

“So what else could it be?” Sherlock asked. 

We both thought on the matter for some little time.

“I did think of letters in each word”, I said at last. “Three letters in the word 'one', five in the word 'three', but then it breaks down.”

Sherlock stared at me curiously, then grinned. He grabbed the primer and made a few quick notes on a pad before turning to me.

“Doctor”, he said urgently, “you are a genius!”

“Eh?”

He hastily scribbled something on a piece of paper then stood up.

“We must telegraph this to Miss St. Leger immediately”, he said. “I do not wish to risk a boy being intercepted by one of my rival's agents as I would not put it past him to try to stop us, despite the fact I am sure that she has covered such an eventuality.”

I looked at my watch.

“Our post-office will be closed”, I said.

“Miss St. Leger is I am sure fully aware of that fact”, he said, “as our rival lives nearly a quarter of a mile further from a post-office than we do. But we both live about the same distance from a major railway station that operates much later into the evening and is in the direction of Swordland's from our houses, in our case Euston. We will stop off and send the answer from there. Or rather I will drop you off and you will have to join me in Islington once you have sent it. It may even be that I beat the message to her offices.”

“I wonder if Mr. Swordland himself will be waiting to receive our answer?” I said. Sherlock chuckled.

“Somehow I think not”, he said. “No, Miss St. Leger will be there and we had better not keep her waiting.”

I pulled my coat on and we ran from the room.

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He was right. Thankfully there was no queue at the telegraph office in Euston Station and I was soon joining him in the secretary's office.

“Well, gentlemen”, she smiled. “You are venturing your answer to our little conundrum?”

“I am”, Sherlock said confidently. “Fortunately a guinea is a most excellent motivational tool for the average London cab-driver, and I see that we have even beaten my friend's telegram here.”

There was a knock at the door and a small boy darted in, placed a message on the silver platter next to Miss St. Leger and stood smartly to attention. She opened it and read it.

“Only just”, she said. “No reply Tom, thank you.”

The boy somehow managed to disappear without apparently leaving the room. Miss St. Leger eyed us cautiously. 

“A most interesting answer”, she said carefully.

The lady was good. There was not even the flicker of an emotion. Then she smiled knowingly.

“You are correct. But I would remind you that you have provided only half of what was asked of you. Unless you can explain your reasoning, we may consider that you made a fortunate guess.”

Sherlock looked offended.

“I never 'guess', madam”, he said, sniffing as if she had uttered an unpleasant word. “I have had my suspicions for the past week but your conundrum, once my friend here had provided me with the key to solving it, was the confirmation I needed.”

“Me?” I said in surprise. He turned to me.

“You wondered whether the letters in each word might be the answer”, he said. “Of course that would have made the sequence 1, 3 and 5 to then go 4 _ad infinitum_ but that, coupled with the clues that Miss St. Leger was so kind as to provide us with, showed me the correct answer.”

He turned back to the lady.

“It was an appropriate word that you chose”, he said. “The six numbers left at the various destroyed offices, when read against the primer that you provided, matched against the letters A, C, E, H, I and R. I deduced that we were looking for a seven-letter word and that the number that corresponded to the missing letter would therefore be the correct answer. But that still left several possibilities, as well you knew. Off the top of my head I could supply the words cashier, archive, chaired and the name or descriptive term Charlie, which would mean the missing letter could already be either an 'S', a 'V', a 'D' or an 'L'. There are almost certainly rarer words which would only expand that field further.”

“At least eight† in the dictionary that you were provided with”, she agreed. “I am surprised that you did not immediately think of one more.”

“I did not, until I saw the picture of the warship”, Sherlock said. “I think you played us a little unfairly there, madam.”

She smiled with an innocence that even I did not believe. But then I had Sherlock.

“What makes you say that?” she asked.

“Because that word, which was the correct one, is unusual in having _two_ possible spellings”, he said. “The old eight-letter version and the newer seven-letter one which I believe is not in some older dictionaries. Matters were further confused by the fact that some but not all books follow our Anglo-Saxon ancestors and print 'ae' as it once was, the single Anglo-Saxon letter ash. The ship was the final clue.”

“How could a ship give you a clue?” I asked.

“The ship was 'H.M.S. Bellerophon'”, he explained. “In Greek mythology, which judging from that overladen bookcase is a major interest of someone in this establishment, the hero Bellerophon killed a beast called the chimera or chimaera. The missing letter was therefore an 'M' which corresponds to my answer, the number thirteen.”

She nodded.

“You have done well”, she said. “You have solved the conundrum and Swordland's will honour its side of the deal, much as will doubtless annoy Mr. Moriarty. Mr. Swordland will be apprised of your success this evening.”

I expected Sherlock to stand at that point but he remained seated.

“I would have thought that he knew already”, he said coolly. She looked at him curiously. 

“What do you mean?” she asked. 

He chuckled.

“It really will not do, Miss St. Leger. Or perhaps I should call you 'Mr. William Swordland'?”

A silence hung in the air between them, before she threw back her head and laughed uproariously. I stared at her in astonishment.

 _“You!”_ she said forcibly. “I knew that you were trouble from the day I met you, but I was sure that even you would not be able to find me out. How did you know?”

“With access to one of the most powerful banks of information that the world has ever known, I realized many years back that 'Mr. William Swordland' was someone I needed either neutral or on my side”, Sherlock said. “You covered your tracks extremely well my lady, but one or two very small slip-ups made me suspect. I had decided not to pursue matters – the Pandora's Box principle - but this challenge was so important that I had no choice but to follow up on my suspicions.”

“Such as?” she demanded at once.

“Mr. Swordland lived in a huge house in Mayfair but kept no servants”, he said. “Perhaps not so strange for a recluse, except that the house reportedly received a major burst of cleaning when he was 'away on holiday', a local firm being called in on each occasion. Yet when I examined the house close up – I am afraid that I did trespass on your property, madam, though of course I did not then know that it was legally yours – everything was in surprisingly good order, particularly the garden. That suggested that someone was living there who maintained the place on a regular basis, which from my little knowledge of the fake 'Mr. Swordland' made it look as if someone else was involved.”

“Go on”, she said.

“I dug further and found the answer”, he said. “Mr. William Swordland had been grafted onto a family of that name by the high-quality efforts of Mr. Silas Rosenstern – he did not betray your confidence but he did one time reveal certain tricks that he used in his documents and that I was able to spot on this occasion – and William's brother Mr. John Swordland was a real person. He had one son George who I quickly established was of weak character and unlikely to be able to run a bath, let alone a powerful information business. Therefore you are most likely Mr. John Swordland's daughter.”

“Dad died ten years ago”, she said with a sigh. “He always wanted me to take the business on after his death – George was and still is about as effective as a chocolate teapot! - but Dad knew as I did that a woman running such an organization would never cut the mustard, even in this day and age. He set most of it up himself, you know. All I had to do was keep things going, pretend that he was still alive and that I was just his secretary.”

“That was also a clue”, Sherlock said. “A man who averages one secretary a week does not as a rule suddenly decide to stay with the same one for over six years, however efficient she may be.”

“It did not help that I was born on the wrong side of the blanket”, she said. “Mum was just a factory worker and Dad had a brief affair with her before his own father sent him abroad for a few years. He never knew I existed until I rolled up at his door.”

She looked up, her eyes bright.

“I worked hard to get where I am today, gentlemen”, she said gruffly. “You know as well as I do how people would react if this got out. I am totally at your mercy.”

Sherlock rose to his feet. 

“It has been a pleasure doing business with you, madam”, he said politely. “I look forward to many further dealings with your most estimable organization. Please extend our greetings to..... 'Mr. Swordland'.”

She smiled at that. We shook hands and left.

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We were standing outside looking for a cab when a small boy hurried up, looking up at the buildings and nearly running into us as he went.

“Steady, young chap!”, I said. “Why the hurry?”

“Message for Miss St. Leger at Swordland's”, he said, sounding anxious. “The fellow who gave it me promised half a crown if I got back to him with an answer in under an hour. It's in Westminster so I gotta run.”

“Medium-height thick-set gentleman with a stubbled beard and dark thinning hair?” I asked. 

He nodded, looking warily at us both. Sherlock took out a half-crown and put it in the boy's hand. He looked at it incredulously.

“Deliver your message”, Sherlock advised, “but when you return with the answer, take my advice and stand well back. It is _not_ going to be well-received, and I doubt that you will get as much as a farthing!”

“Cor!” the boy said, looking at wealth the like of which he had almost certainly never seen in his life before. “Thanks guv'nor!”

“Good luck”, Sherlock smiled as the boy trotted into Swordland's.

“He will need it!” I prophesied.

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“There is still the Red-Headed League”, I observed later as we were sat by the fire after a most pleasant dinner. Mrs. Hudson's chocolate flake trifle was one of those heavenly miracles which did not occur often enough, in my humble opinion.

Sherlock chuckled.

“What is so funny?” I asked.

“John, the Red-Headed League was the chimaera”, he yawned. “It never existed.”

“But... how?” I spluttered.

“Consider the circumstances”, he said. “The resourceful Miss St. Leger had taken an increasing dislike to the rising menace of Professor Moriarty and wished to abandon her firm's traditional neutrality, adhering to the side of law and order. However she knows that the London criminal fraternity, much as they hate the Professor, will not respond well to that. So she creates, if I may use the word, a chimaera.”

“A chimaera”, I said slowly.

“In the modern sense of an illusion”, Sherlock said. “A rival organization which tries repeatedly to encroach on her own company's turf only to be set fire to repeatedly and, finally, to have their buildings blown up beneath them. The message from 'Mr. William Swordland' is loud and clear; mess with us and we will repeatedly set fire to you, and if you _still_ do not get the message we shall blast you to kingdom come! Anyone looking to take them on would think twice when they stare at six sets of smoking ruins in barely a week.”

“That is brilliant!” I said.

“Indeed”, he said. “Miss St. Leger is in her own way as formidable as Mrs. Emmeline Strong, and much more dangerous. It is good to have her on our side in the coming conflict. We shall need every ally that we can get.”

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_Notes:_   
_† The other words would have been archine (a Russian unit of length a little over two foot), cahiers (reports of the proceedings in parliament), charier (more cautious) and theriac (an antidote to snake-bites)._

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	15. Case 175: The Adventure Of The Little Match-Girl ☼

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1890\. Sherlock may have thought that the scum known as Professor Moriarty could sink no lower. He is about to be proven wrong.

_[Narration by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire]_

I stared incredulously at the card that had just been sent up. I knew what I was reading but even after seven(ish) rashers of bacon my brain simply could not process it. This just had to be a mistake.

“What is it?” John asked anxiously.

“Mrs. Margaret Ball is downstairs and wishes to speak to us!” I exclaimed. _“Here! In Baker Street!”_

He looked confused for a moment before he got it.

“Queen Molly”, he remembered. “But I thought you said that she never leaves her beloved East End?”

“Exactly”, I said, recovering. “Yet she is here. What on earth can have happened to have caused such a thing?”

Unfortunately I was just about to find out. Even more unfortunately, not that long before lunch.

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Not for the last time I began to think that I was wont to underestimate our landlady, for that was most definitely a curtsey as she (not one of the maids as was usual) showed our visitor in. I also noted that Betty had actually caught her up with a tray of coffee and cakes by the time they reached the door. Hmm.

We both bowed to our royal visitor and she nodded to us before taking a seat.

“I wish that it was good news that brings me here today”, she sighed, “but alas! it is not. It concerns someone that we both know to our grave misfortune. Professor James Moriarty.”

“What has he done now?” I asked.

“I am sure that you more than most people know how that man operates”, she said frostily, “so I cannot say for sure that he has done anything. But a recent action against one of my subjects has caused me Grave Displeasure, and it just _smells_ of him.”

I knew immediately that this matter was perhaps even more important than the Ferrers documents case, when I had been able to assist our visitor's niece in securing her rightful inheritance. It had taken several months of work but the rascally lawyer Mr. Mandelson's thievery had finally all been recovered from him and his partner in crime his wife. More importantly our visitor had been able to inform her subjects that she was officially Pleased with me. My arch-enemy must by this time have come to suspect that his sudden run of back luck was not a coincidence – mendicants were everywhere, as he was finding out the hard way – and had I knew made some approaches to our visitor to try to worm his way back into favour, but to no avail. If he was marked with her Grave Displeasure, his bad luck would increase at least threefold.

“There is a girl called Tillie who sells matchboxes for some extra pennies not far from that club of yours, gentlemen”, our visitor said. “The one that you go to every Thursday, doctor.”

She looked knowingly at John, who blushed fiercely. Thursday was chocolate dessert day at Benfield's, one of the places where the top class of membership that my parents had purchased for me allowed him to have them on his card as an associate member, and he adored their delicious chocolate desserts. It was some distance from Baker Street but we always walked there so he could walk off... oh.

Belatedly I got it. Our visitor nodded.

“Tillie has sold you boxes in the past, gentlemen”, she said, “and you have been more than generous to her for which I thank you. Yesterday evening she was approached by a man who had a most shocking proposition for her. And I say that as someone who has seen more than their fair share of things in this city of ours!”

She shuddered and took a deep breath before continuing.

“This man _claimed_ that he had been cuckolded by one of the members of the nearby club, and wanted revenge”, she said. “He asked Tillie, who thankfully is not as credulous as she looks, if she would agree to setting off what he called a small device to scare his supposed cuckolder. She, very sensibly, reported it at once and I had her round this morning for details.”

“Did she happen to see if this man came out of the club?” I asked. Our visitor nodded.

“She was sure that he did”, she said, “as she saw him snapping at the doorman when he left. She described him as about fifty years of age, rotund to the point of bursting his buttons, expensively dressed and with what she described as badly-dyed black curly hair. She also said that he smelled, of cologne I presume.”

“That would be Mr. Alfred Grayland”, John said at once. “Horrible fellow; always going on in the dining-room about how he would set the world to rights if he was king of it. He calls himself 'Ace' because his first names are Alfred, Charles and Edward; I know that his fellow lawyers have another and rather more accurate name for him! He was the lawyer responsible for that dreadful Barton Case.”

 _(This case some three years back had achieved what many might have thought impossible, and made people think even more ill of the legal profession. In one of the eternal conflicts in our eastern Empire some soldiers had been accused by some of the non-enlisted men working in logistics of abusing local young men. Mr. Grayland had claimed to have taken the case on_ pro bono _but it had later emerged that as an ardent anti-imperialist he had facilitated the allegations and been promised a share of any payout. That the Law Society had not struck him off as a result said a lot about his profession, none of if complimentary and all of it accurate)._

“And an author like yourself”, our visitor said, “if of the sort of dry legal matter that doubtless acts better than most so-called soporifics. Yes, I identified him easily enough. A most unpleasant fellow who never gives as much as a farthing and has been known to strike beggars who he considers too near his mighty personage. He is the sort who I can see dealing with the Professor, but I am sure that you gentlemen can see my problem.”

“You need direct proof of the link before you speak to your subjects”, I said. “A wise precaution, especially when dealing with the Professor. I can contact Miss St. Leger and I am sure that she will find the connection soon enough.”

“Perhaps a better choice than your cousin Mr. Garrick”, she smiled. “My subjects tell me that after another long weekend in the country with a certain Mr. Jackson-Giles, he is out of commission. _Again!”_

I sighed. Nothing was secret in London! And my bastard cousin would insist on 'accidentally' telling me all about it when we next met. Unless I managed to slip Benji some extra supplies first and he was unable to talk...'

John really was becoming a bad influence on me. I glared at the villain and he had the cheek to look nonplussed. Harrumph!

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I gave the 'queen' some money for Tillie along with a note promising more once the matter was sorted, then sent round to Miss St. Leger for the required information. I was not surprised when it arrived that evening, but the gentleman who brought it round did surprise me.

“Benji?”

My cousin's lover grinned, and I could already sense John's unease. Benji always leered at me in a way that he did not approve of so it was very fortunate that my friend was not the jealous sort, although the advent of the fruiterer always seemed to coincide with the return of that cough of his.

“I was taking a note from Mr. Lucifer to Miss St. Leger, Mr. Holmes sir”, the behemoth said, “and she asked me to bring this round while I was there.”

“I take it that you left my cousin in one piece?” I asked dryly.

“He likes being in several pieces, sir”, Benji grinned. “Though he did scream a bit when I had to help him down the stairs and into his cab for work! Even that magic unguent as he calls it can only do so much!”

I sighed again. The young generation!

“Thank you for bringing me this, Benji”, I said, tipping him (I knew that Miss St. Leger would have already paid him and had in all likelihood delayed sending me this since she would have known of his coming, but then the way his family was increasing the insatiable behemoth needed every penny that he could get). “How is the art job going?”

“Very well sir”, he said. “'Course Billy had to give it up when he got married what with his wife not liking it, but Steve – Mr. Sawyer – he loves it. Plus he brought Jake along who, as you remember, is a bit different.”

I smiled at my friend's understatement. Mr. Jake Rackham truly earned his nickname of The Rake, making him and his burly docker a very odd couple. Although Jake was incredibly shy for a molly-man so how had he.... oh.

Benji was grinning again. I shook my head at him.

“You gave Jake the same sort of look that you use on poor Luke, did you not?” I sighed.

“Only for their own good”, Benji grinned, shrugging his broad shoulders. “Jake, he needs the money, and Mr. Lucifer - he has needs too! Well, maybe not just now in his state!”

I rolled my eyes at him. He was terrible at times – which was good, as since he was here he could stop by a certain local shop and pick up those supplies for my too-informative cousin....

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I was not surprised that there was indeed a link between Mr. Grayland and the professor, even though the latter had rerouted his money through six bank accounts two of which were abroad. If the villain had honestly thought that that would stop the likes of Miss St. Leger finding him out, then there was hope for beating him yet. I was therefore able to send to Queen Molly so she could let her subjects know of this, and that she was Gravely Displeased with my enemy. An enemy whose 'luck' was about to go from bad to dire.

I did not worry about Mr. Grayland simply because I did not need to. The following day the 'Times' reported that he had been badly beaten while returning home from one of his clubs, and that he had apparently been left a piece of paper advising him to leave the country. I was not the least bit surprised that it took two more beatings for him to finally get the message and decamp to somewhere in Africa, where hopefully he ran into an unfussy and hungry cannibal. England and the legal profession were both much the better for his departure.

I also received another telegram from Luke. For some strange reason it simply said 'I hate you!' How strange......

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	16. Case 176: The Adventure Of The Knuckle-Duster

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1890\. Once again a past kindness pays a much-needed present dividend, although more for Sherlock than John who is less than pleased when a face from the past reappears in their lives. Not that he is jealous at all. Perish the thought!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also mentioned as the case of Mathews, who shattered Sherlock's left canine at Charing Cross Station.

_[Narration by Doctor John Watson, M.D.]_

Apart from some well-loved 'regulars' like Miss St. Leger, Mrs. Hudson and our policemen friends LeStrade and Gregson (plus unloved regulars like a certain lounge-lizard who I could have cheerfully pushed off Beachy Head, sea pollution be damned!), most people involved in Sherlock's cases came, went and were never seen again. A small number however did appear more than once in our adventures – with such a range of characters as the observant Mrs. Cecil Forrester, the pestilential Mrs. Michaela Hustings and the murderous Professor James Moriarty it was really a case of the good, the bad and the ugly – and this case brought two more people whom we had helped back into our lives. One was welcome, the other (even if he did provide valuable assistance at a difficult time) rather less so. 

And yes, this case also brought out an arguably less than admirable facet of my own character. We are all human after all. 

Except, I am quite sure, Professor James Moriarty.

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It was still August, little more than a month after Sherlock's successes in first the Red-Headed League then against the vile Mr. Alfred Grayland. We were I hoped to be granted a brief respite from our ongoing struggles against the vile Professor James Moriarty as the villain had gone abroad for a month to attend a family funeral somewhere in Italy. Hopefully somewhere a shade too near an exploding volcano or a sudden avalanche I thought not at all sourly, though I doubted that we could be that fortunate. I knew that the effort of combating this vile piece of human excrement was mentally draining my poor friend, so any opportunity for a rest was more than welcome. 

We were not to be that lucky, although on reflection I suppose that we were fortunate to come out of the next calamity that was about to befall us in one piece. Indeed it was Sherlock's innate generosity that repaid itself in spades especially in the way he (over-)rewarded those who assisted him, and it all began with the card that was brought up that first, horrible morning.

“It is from our friend Mr. Godfreyson”, he said, surprised. “He says that one of his 'boys' has acquired some information about a potential threat and that this 'Larry' – Mr. Laurence Trevelyan to give him his proper title – is downstairs waiting to see us.”

I yawned and glared at him. It was one of the few downsides of our current sleeping arrangements that, very rarely, he would be unable to settle and spend hours clambering all over me like I was some sort of human climbing frame before inevitably ending up as we nearly always did with his larger framed 'spooned' around my slightly shorter. To be embraced all night would I suppose have bothered some men, but I was more than manly enough to be able to cope with it.

Sherlock seemed to be having some sort of coughing fit. I stared at him suspiciously – he had better not be doing that mind-reading thing of his again – but he gave the card back to Betty and told the maid that our visitor might ascend. The girl left quickly, which was just as well as I strongly suspected her of Severe Unwonted Smirking. Again!

“What can it be about?” I wondered. Mr. Sweyn Godfreyson had just taken over the whole of Sherlock's stepbrother Campbell's empire after the latter had last month retired to a small cottage in Buckinghamshire with his lover Alan. The new owner was the elder brother of Harold Godfreyson, the tide-waiter who had provided the last case during our 'Grand Tour' and Sherlock had, as I have said before, helped the molly-man with their mother's subsequent visit so that she had not found out his true vocation. 

“Sweyn once told us that this 'Larry' is the fellow he is training up as his own second-in-command”, Sherlock reminded me. “I know that he did offer the post to our friend Steve, but he is happy where he is as well as quite busy with his 'rakish' new love. Of this new fellow all I can say is that he is relatively young; Sweyn said that he preferred someone that he could mould to his ways rather than someone who would have ideas about changing things the minute he stepped through the door. Or perhaps rose from the bed might be a better phrase in this instance.”

“And doubtless he is handsome”, I said not at all sourly. 

I wished the words unsaid as soon as they were out of my mouth. A slow smile creased my friend's handsome features. Damnation!

“John Watson”, he smirked. “Are you _jealous?”_

“No!” I said in what may or may not have been a rather high-pitched voice. I took a breath and gathered myself before continuing. “I have you now.”

Lord, I sounded like the possessive wife in one of those God-awful melodramas again! I hid behind my newspaper and thankfully he did not press the matter. What a relief!

Some day. Some day I would catch a break. Law of averages; it had to happen _eventually._

Today, however, was not that day.

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A few minutes later our visitor was announced, and rather unusually Mrs. Hudson herself showed up this 'Larry' (it was quite unbecoming of a lady of her status to do that fake swooning thing, I felt). He was not that good-looking all things considered, and.....

And that was when it hit me, like an express train at full speed. I stared incredulously at our visitor; no way could even my luck be _this_ bad! 'Larry' – Mr. Laurence Trevelyan - was none other than Lowen, the white-blond Cornish fisherman who had ferried us to and from Annet in the Scilly Isles during the Repellent Philanthropist case some eleven years ago. He had filled out since then – all muscle, worse luck - and he still had the same bright blue eyes, passably presentable features and, worst of all, leering look when it came to _my_ Sherlock. Harrumph!

Mrs. Hudson left us (with a final and totally unbecoming simper that I would have commented on later had there not been a pistol in the house) and our unwanted guest took the fireside chair opposite Sherlock. I forwent my usual place at the table and instead stood right behind my man's chair awkward though that was for my writing, and pointedly placed my ring hand on my man's shoulder. I may have coughed rather deeply in a way that an uncharitable person might just possibly have taken for a defensive growl. 

Even though he was facing away from me I could _feel_ someone's smirk. Harrumph!

“I assure you doctor, I know not to touch what belongs to someone else”, our visitor smiled and I noted that his Cornish accent had completely vanished. “Besides, I am here to help save your 'friend' from a potential threat. Quite probably a deadly one.”

“It is good to see you again”, Sherlock smiled as I did not glare crossly at our unwanted guest and definitely did not hear a barely suppressed snigger from someone who did not want extra bacon any time soon. “Looking _so_ well. We look forward to hearing what you have to say.”

I gave him one last look before taking my usual place at the table. The fact that he was some eight years younger than myself, in moderately fair physical condition and arguably better-looking in a certain light was neither here nor there and the pair of them could stop with the smirking at my perfectly reasonable behaviour _right now!_

“I had a client the other day”, our unwelcome visitor said. “A Mr. Morton Mathews. I had to go to his house which was a little unusual but Sweyn is always careful about such things, just like Campbell. We did what he wanted, and as it was late in the evening he subsequently fell asleep.”

“I suppose that it was wrong of me to pry but I am always curious about my clients' personal lives. How the other half lives, I suppose. Before leaving I checked out his bookshelves of which he had rather a lot. He had some decidedly varied choices of literature; there seemed rather too many on the subject of poisons and methods of killing. That chilled me as well as confirming my assessment of him – I had already decided to tell Sweyn that I would be unavailable for him in the future - so I decided to make my exit.”

“As you can see from the address” - he placed a card on the small table - “the house fronts out onto a busy main road where policeman patrol frequently. Because of both this and the hour I decided to leave via the back which leads into a quiet thoroughfare. On my way out however I discovered something most alarming, which is what brought me here today. There was a small room at the back of the house and the words 'Private: Keep Out!' had been printed on a card on it.”

“It was not locked?” Sherlock asked. Our guest smiled slightly.

“One picks up some unusual skills in my business”, he said. “I was able to open it easily enough. Inside someone had set up some sort of chemical laboratory. I did not of course recognize any of the solutions that were there but two things struck me as worrisome. The first was a knuckle-duster, which seemed strangely out of place in such an environment. The second was a newspaper with an article on the front page having been ringed.” He looked pointedly at Sherlock before adding, “that article, sir, was about your good self.”

“You think that this Mr. Mathews is coming after me?” Sherlock asked. Our guest nodded.

“Unfortunately I could not stay to investigate further”, he said, “as I heard a noise from upstairs that suggested my client was up. I relocked the door then left as quickly as possible to alert Sweyn so that we might warn you.”

“We thank you for being so very considerate”, Sherlock smiled. “Do we not, doctor?”

I grunted my assent.

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_Why did I have to end up with the man with the most annoying not-smirk in all London Town?_

“Stop it!” I grumbled.

“Stop what?” he asked innocently. I glared at him.

“You know what”, I scowled (it was not a pout). “That Adonis was only after one thing back in Cornwall, and now he is here in London!”

“That 'Adonis' was quite charming”, said someone who was now definitely not getting my bacon rations any time soon (I was clearly becoming delusional in my... middle age). “I am sure that he will do well under Sweyn who, as we know, greatly admires Benji's physique....”

I ratcheted up the scowl another notch. The arguably sort of good-looking fruiterer was another fellow who looked at my Sherlock in an Improper Way, and he had his own Holmes – well, sort of Holmes – so he had no need.

“....and is enamoured of Benji's brother Lloyd”, he finished, smirking far too much for any true gentleman. The latter is not quite turned eighteen however though so once again his morals preclude any move just yet. You remember Lloyd; Benji brought him round that one time. Nothing like as handsome as his 'big' brother I would say, but they do say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”

“Harrumph!”

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I was feeling resentful at the Ado.... the ex-fisherman's return all day and someone's not-smirking made matters worse. I was dreading bed that night, and unusually he kept his distance from me once he had joined me.

“I am sorry that you think so little of me, John”, he said quietly. “That you think I could be won over by a pretty face, a handsome body, a good nature, a kind....”

 _“Not_ helping!” I snapped. 

He chuckled and I turned to look at him. In the dim moonlight he seemed more beautiful than ever while I... I was two and half years older than him but feeling more like twelve and a half. Especially after the lithe leering Lowen's visit.

“I have you”, he said simply. “A great heart, a manly face, a muscular body, a generous nature – all mine. Mine and no-one else's. We will not always be young, my friend – indeed, if this business with Moriarty turns out ill I may never be old....”

I shuddered at that.

“But if and when we do make old bones we will be two grumpy old men, scandalizing the neighbours with our affections and kisses long after we have passed the age when the younger generation would think us to have grown out of it. We can almost picture their eye-rolls now!”

It was an appealing picture. A cottage somewhere in the country, just me and Sherlock and no more dangers. Some day, I thought, just maybe. I wrapped myself around him and sighed. He did care for me, really.

Then he had to go and ruin it all!

“But I suppose that he was good-looking, and....”

_“Shut! Up!”_

The bastard sniggered but said no more. Though I could still hear that damn not-smirk!

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The next development in this case was more than a little unexpected. I returned from a day at the surgery to find that the wall along the stairway of 221B had acquired something new, namely several bullet-holes. I was not unnaturally alarmed.

“It is all right, doctor”, Miss Thackeray told me as she came out of her rooms. “We had an unwelcome visitor today who decided to ignore a request to leave, so my aunt had to use her pistol.”

“Do you know who it was?” I asked.

“He dropped one of his cards as he fled”, she said. “A Mr. Morton Mathews.”

I froze.

“What happened?” I asked anxiously.

“He told Mary that he needed to see Mr. Holmes and he did not wish to be announced”, she said. “My aunt heard the commotion and came out, and caught him starting up the stairs. When he refused her request to stop she let him have it in the backside.”

I winced. Mrs. Hudson used a low-powered pistol that had actually been recommended to her by one of Sherlock's clients, as it had a low recoil but still had shot that was could make an impression on the target. Several small pellets down there... ouch! I mounted the stairs to find my friend.

Who was looking in less than perfect shape. I frowned.

“What has happened to you?” I asked. 

“I went to Charing Cross Station this morning”, he said.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because after his foreshortened visit here I knew that this Mr. Mathews wished to make an attempt on my life”, he said, “and I wanted him to have the opportunity so to do. His job is a porter for the South Eastern Railway Company and I contrived to meet him.”

I stared at him in shock.

“You were taking a terrible risk!” I scolded. “What has happened to your face?”

“As I expected he punched me in it”, Sherlock said. “With rather more force that I expected; I seem to be minus a left canine. But against the cost of saving my life it is a small price to pay. Are you hungry?”

I blinked at the apparent _non sequitur._ My stomach, clearly quicker than my brain when it came to the important things in life, let out a rather loud rumble.

“Well, a bit”, I admitted, blushing. 

“I fancy a dinner at that restaurant that serves extra-thick bacon over in Kensington”, he said, smiling slightly. “We shall also be able to call on Mr. Mathews on the way there in order to bring matters to a conclusion.”

I stared at him in confusion.

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Mr. Morton Mathews lived in a far higher-class residence than I would have thought for a mere railwayman, in one of the best parts of a decent borough. His house was small but well-situated and about the only bad thing about it was the busy road in front that the Ado... that that dratted Cornish ex-fisherman had told us about. And if there was even a _hint_ of a smirk then someone was sleeping alone tonight!

_That included judgemental silences and all!_

Judging from the reaction of the fellow who answered the door and who stared at Sherlock in utter confusion, he had to be our quarry.

“We shall not detain you long”, Sherlock said, while I wished that he had warned me to bring my gun. “You were of course not expecting us.”

“What are you doing here?” Mr. Mathews asked suspiciously. “You should be dead!”

“Ah yes, your knuckle-duster”, Sherlock said. “It packs quite a punch, possibly more than I expected from the gap I can feel in my mouth. You coated the outer parts of it with a deadly poison so that anyone hit and as much as slightly grazed by it would have that poison enter their bloodstream, then fall dead in a matter of hours.”

The man stared at him in astonishment.

“How the hell could you know _that?”_ he demanded.

For the first time I noticed how pale he was. I wondered if it was because of Mrs. Hudson's unerring aim; I had noticed that he was staggering slightly as he stood in the doorway. I only hoped that whatever doctor he had gone to for the extraction of those bullets had done it as painfully as possible.

“Because I made sure that you knew I would be at the station”, Sherlock said mildly. “I lost a tooth. You on the other hand are about to lose rather more.”

The man looked as if he was about to say something but seemed unable. He sank down onto one knee, looking even paler.

“You would not want to confront me near a policeman”, Sherlock said, “so I borrowed Ned, one of my friend Sergeant Baldur's constables, to accompany me to the station. While you were watching us, you did not notice another of my acquaintances remove your knuckle-duster from your pocket – she really is the most excellent pickpocket by the way; I have employed her services on two previous occasions – and replace it with another one. Similar in almost all aspects to your own, except that in this one the poison, which she also extracted from your house last night while making a drawing of the original, was coated on the _inside.”_

The man fell completely to the floor, looking up piteously at us. I felt precisely nothing for him.

“It really has not been the best of days for you”, Sherlock said soothingly. “Still, at least you did not also encounter the landlady's niece, who has deterred the attentions of more than one young gentleman by providing free demonstrations of her own quite impressive gun collection. We shall be leaving.”

He glared at us from his prone position but was unable to do anything. As Sherlock pulled the door shut, I heard what was almost certainly his dying breath. I suppose that I should have hastened to do what I could for him but my friend had mentioned the name of the poison as I had hesitated, and I knew that there was no cure once it had been in the body for as long as it had been for him. He would have the same death that he had wished to visit on my friend, and the devil was welcome to him!

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“You still exposed yourself to unnecessary danger”, I said reprovingly as we walked to his restaurant. 

“I must, in my line of work”, he said. “Besides I chose this restaurant not just for myself but for you.”

I stared at him suspiciously.

“To make up for all the bacon that you take from me every morning?” I asked.

“I do not take it”, he said primly. “You give it to me.”

“Only because you look like the most misused friend in the history of friendship if I do not!” I scoffed. “You know I can never refuse me when you look at me in that way of yours.”

“What way is that, John?” he asked innocently.

I just glared at him. We had reached the restaurant and he pointed across the road.

“A new bakery”, he said. “They sell six different types of chocolate cake!”

All right, I suppose that there was some small reason why I kept him around.

“I must also remember to buy a thank-you present for the obliging Mr. Trevelyan”, the bastard said with a sly grin. “I wonder what he would like?”

I so very nearly said 'a bloody ticket all the way back to bloody Cornwall!' That reason for which I kept him around suddenly seemed elusive again.

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	17. Case 177: The Adventure Of The Giant Rat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1890\. Another fearsome creature stalks the East End of London, and John does something that he will bitterly regret.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mentioned also as the case of the 'Matilda Briggs'.

_Narration by Doctor John Watson, M.D.]_

It was some thirty years since Mr. Charles Darwin had published his great work “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life” (and to think; some people had the brass neck to claim that _my_ titles were too long!). The idea of Mankind evolving from an ape-like ancestor - not, as many opponents of the theory disingenuously claimed, from modern apes - that had in different parts of the world produced monkeys and chimpanzees was slowly becoming accepted scientific fact, and I remember once wondering if as Mankind pushed further into the thus far hidden reaches of our planet it might not find some 'cousins' from elsewhere in its family tree.

As things turned out something had indeed been found. Something extremely unpleasant.

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I have mentioned before in those cases with a French connection as to the shock waves that had reverberated across the Continent when once-mighty France had seen German troops marching through Paris, and had been subsequently forced to cede the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine to the Kaiser. As one might have expected this had led Germany's neighbours to seriously consider their own positions, and that same year (1871) the Dutch had signed a treaty with the United Kingdom ceding their lands in the Gold Coast (the area around Jamestown in West Africa, now dominated by the growing port of Accra) in return for a free hand over the island of Sumatra in the East Indies where they wished to subdue the local tribes in order to secure their trade routes to the Spice Islands. Our Nation retained trading rights but no political ones as regards Sumatra, an island over twice the size of Great Britain and larger than the American state of California. 

This was why it was not unusual when a ship called the 'Matilda Briggs' arrived to London from Sumatra via Cape Town. Except that the cargo this ship was carrying would soon bring terror anew to a city only just recovering from the scourge that had been Jack the Ripper.

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My friend's involvement in this case began with the killing of Captain Thomas Warner in September of that year, an event which was brought to his attention by the captain's first mate, a likeable old salt by name of Mr. Frank Pyle. He had reported the death to Sergeant Baldur at the station and had been advised to also bring the case to us as the sergeant thought that it might interest the great (if immodest) detective who, I wished, would not look suspiciously at me when I was making notes.

“I blame myself, sirs”, Mr. Pyle said sniffing mournfully. “We were drinking down at the Anchor & Hope not far from our ship and he left early because he wanted to finish some paperwork or other. He had half an hour's start on me, three quarters tops, and when I followed him....”

His voice trailed off and he looked deathly pale.

“It was horrible, sirs!” he muttered. “He'd been mauled by some sort of creature and there were hardly anything left of him. But by the red socks he always wore – lucky he called them, hah! - and his neckerchief, I knew it was him all right.”

Sherlock poured him another drink, which he accepted gratefully.

“Where precisely did you find the body, please?” he asked.

“Dew Street, sir, just beyond where it meets Garrovick Lane”, the sailor said. “There's a few posh places further down the Garrovick where some of the men who've made their fortune from the ships live.”

My friend thought for a moment.

“Was the place that you found him on the usual route back to the ship?” he asked. 

The sailor frowned in thought.

“No”, he said at last. “By rights he should've turned left down Garrovick, not carried on. Unless he just wanted a walk p'raps; as I said he'd been drinking with me.”

“That may suggest that he may have been either fleeing, or possibly headed to some assignation”, Sherlock explained. “What is the name of your ship, please?”

“The 'Matilda Briggs', sir. One of the best.” 

“Have you carried any unusual cargoes of late?”

There was a definite hesitation before the 'no'. Sherlock pounced.

“Come, sir”, he said. “This man was clearly a friend as well as a superior, or you would not be here today. If you wish me to investigate his death which I must say I am inclined to do, then I must have _all_ the facts.”

The sailor nodded.

“I spoke truth sir; I have not myself been on any such voyages. But for three months last year I was at home waiting for my wife to give birth....”

“Successfully I hope?” I put in. He smiled warmly.

“A son, Forrest, named for my wife's family”, he said. “I returned to my ship when she got back from her last trip out east and more than one of the men told me it hadn't been a happy voyage, not at all. The master had agreed – very reluctantly, they said - to transport something back from the island of Sumatra for a gentleman in London. The fellow who wanted it shipped paid handsomely and the men all got big bonuses, but they was still uneasy. No-one was allowed to see it and it came with its own guard who they said was a bastard. Though us sailors are a superstitious sort, so everyone says.”

“Superstition is sometimes justified”, Sherlock said. “Like the much-vaunted female intuition, it can be caused by something which is briefly observed and registers in the viewer only a sense of unease without knowing exactly why; I have had more than one such case in my time. Do you happen to know the name of the gentleman for whom this cargo was destined?”

“I don't, sir, but if you go see young Tim Cash – he was my stand-in for the voyage and a sound fellow – I'm sure he'd remember. He lives in Barrowby Street, number seventy-one. He's on the 'Wayfarer' now away to Norway or somewhere up there but she'll be back in port next Monday morning in the small hours, and he always has a few days home before he heads out again.”

“Thank you, sir”, Sherlock said. “I promise that I shall indeed look into this case for you. If you write your address on the doctor's notepad I shall communicate any findings that I have to you there.”

The seaman did so and left. I looked at my friend.

“This is serious?” I ventured.

He nodded. It was after all barely a year since Sherlock's wise counsel had (when belatedly heeded) led to a man being placed in an asylum and the Ripper attacks immediately ceasing. The city was still on edge every time a death was even remotely suspicious, not helped by a number of the sadly inevitable copy-cat crimes. If this was the start of something new then it boded very ill, and was the last thing we (Sherlock) needed what with Professor Moriarty back in the country.

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I could not but be aware that the strain of working against Professor James Moriarty was telling on my friend. He would sometimes doze off in the afternoon, his book falling to his side, and if I was there I would gently place a blanket over his sleeping form then go to my room to fret in silence. More and more we held each other in bed of an evening for some time before sleep claimed us, like an old married couple, and sometimes I felt him trembling as if he was afraid I might be ripped away from him in some way. As if I would ever leave him! As if I ever could!

Sherlock's 'clinginess', for want of a better word, also manifested itself in a refusal to take on any case that would take him away from London. This had led to a renewal of troubles with his brother Randall – already back to his old self, worse luck - when the previous month had seen the lounge-lizard _demanding_ that Sherlock go down to some country house to sort out a political matter and my friend had refused. Angry words had been exchanged and the lounge-lizard had gone so far to slam the door on the way out, a mistake that he never made again as he had rounded the last turn of the stairwell to find Mrs. Hudson waiting in the hallway. _With her pistol!_ She did not take kindly to people damaging her property and she made him go all the way back up the stairs and shut the door quietly before she would let him leave. She was formidable (as in terrifying) like that.

It might be argued that my standing at the top of the stairs clapping and cheering was pushing it a bit, I suppose. Oh well.

Of course some people never learn and the lounge-lizard was back the following month just after Mr. Pyle's visit to once again _demand_ Sherlock's services (he was it seemed incapable of asking for anything). When he said that it was a matter in the far reaches of north-east Scotland – Morayshire to be exact – Sherlock flatly refused to go. Our unwelcome guest again stormed out (unfortunately this time without drawing our landlady's ire or bullets) and was gone. My poor friend looked broken after his departure and we sat on the couch together for some considerable time, just holding each other.

“I love you”, he whispered into my neck, his voice breaking with emotion. “I will always love you, John. Always and forever.”

Those words should have made me happy, but I could not shake the growing feeling that this sort of happiness never really lasted for the John Watsons of this world, and that somehow everything would unravel one way or another.

I was barely six months away from finding out how it would do just that.

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The following week we headed to Barrowby Street to see Mr. Cash, the 'Wayfarer' having docked the morning prior. It did not however go quite as I had expected or hoped. 

We were met at the door what was presumably a relative of some sort, possibly a brother as he was about twenty-five years of age. When Sherlock stated who we were, he looked positively hostile.

“I'm not risking what happened to poor Cap'n Warner happening to my own damn brother!” he said firmly. “No questions!”

“May I at least hear that from him?” Sherlock asked.

The young man who was quite well-built looked set to continue his objections until he caught sight of me over Sherlock's shoulder. And his expression completely changed.

_“Doctor Watson!”_

“Pardon?” I said. I did not know this man from Adam. 

He chuckled.

“'Course, you never actually met me”, he smiled to my further confusion. “Eighty-three it was, seven years back. You were treating one of the Totness sisters for a skin complaint.”

I remembered now. It had been during my brief stay in Dorset Street, just days before the rupture with Sherlock that had caused me to decamp to Egypt, and the three females in question had been utterly atrocious! Not only did the house smell so strongly of violets that it had made me feel ill, but they had all been very rude and far too full of themselves. 

“I remember them well”, I said ruefully. “Misses Susanna, Sarah and Samantha. All quite insufferable women!”

“I'm Martin Cash; me and my sister Peg worked at the house then”, he explained. “Peg had much the same thing as Miss Rose and those stuck-up toffs said it wasn't worth treating a servant. That was until you told them that the longer anyone in the house had the disease, the more likely it was that the rest of them would become infected.”

I blushed. I did not like to lie to my patients but the Totness sisters had rubbed me up the wrong way at a time in my life when I was particularly vulnerable. Miss Sarah had questioned me most rudely as to why the unction for the servants was different to the one which her sister had been given and I had compounded my sins by telling her that the unguent in question was for the richest patients only. In truth I had merely added some walnut essence to the same preparation knowing that it would make some people feel superior. I may or may not have also charged some way above my usual rate for that. Quite by accident of course. 

_I really wished that Sherlock would not shake his head at me like that!_

“Come on in, friend!”, Mr. Cash smiled. “I'm sure my brother would love to meet you!”

Sherlock gave me another look as I passed him and even though I could not see any outward sign of it I knew that he was smiling. Which was good.

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Mr. Timothy Cash did indeed have the information that we required. 

“Me and the lads thought he had a woman down there at first!” he chuckled. “The fellow who was with the crate, he always took down enough food for two or three people; guess he thought us sailors were too dumb to notice something like that. None of us were allowed down there; Bob got yelled at for walking down the corridor just to get to the store room for heaven's sake!”

“How big was the crate, please?” Sherlock asked.

“I only saw it being loaded, not close up”, Mr. Cash said. “I'd say big enough so a man could sit hunched up inside but not spread out. I think four foot all round; maybe a bit more.”

“The gentleman it was bound for?” Sherlock asked. “I do not suppose you happen to remember his name?”

“Mr. Sextus Ballen-Wyre”, our host said at once. He smiled at my surprised expression. “The sailor who trained me up on my first ever ship, the 'Windermere', he was a Sextus, and I thought of him holding a ball of wire. The name kinda stuck in the old noggin.”

“You have a most excellent memory, sir”, Sherlock said, placing a half-crown on the table. “We thank you for the important information that you have provided. The doctor and I must set about finding this man and seeing what he has to say for himself.

Unfortunately as things turned out we did not get to see Mr. Sextus Ballen-Wyre.

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We journeyed back west, stopping at Sherlock's insistence at my favourite dining-place in Trafalgar Square. While waiting for our food I purchased a newspaper from a vendor across the street and perused it as Sherlock sucked on his pipe. Then I let out a gasp.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Listen to this!” I said. “'Police are investigating a savage killing in Conway Square, not far from Fenchurch Street Railway Station. At approximate nine o' clock this morning servants at the house of a Mr. Sextus Ballen-Wyre discovered their master's body lying in the narrow alleyway that runs along the side of their house. The slain gentleman had been most brutally and savagely attacked; early indications are that he died from either blood loss or shock. There were also found footmarks in the vicinity that suggest it wast the work of a large predator of some sort.'”

“I doubt that Mr. Ballen-Wyre was killed by a wayward Bengal tiger that just happened to be passing through the East End”, Sherlock said dryly. “Is there anything else?”

“They have included a sketch of one of the footmarks”, I said. “A rather poor quality one; it looks like a bird.”

“Well unless the thing was a reincarnation of Prometheus's tormentor, we may rule out a giant eagle too”, Sherlock said. “This is most worrisome. Now we have no other choice but to sit and wait for further developments.”

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Which is what we had to do. September gave way to October and the leaves began to tumble from the trees, but it seemed as if whatever had killed those two men – assuming that it was a single creature – had either moved on or had met its own maker. That was until the end of the month when the night of All Hallow's Eve saw a third attack. A young sailor by the name of Geoffrey Bull had been attacked while returning from a tavern to his ship. He had been badly mauled but had been lucky enough to have been carrying a knife and had managed to wound his attacker. He had fully expected the assault to continue but his assailant had fled shrieking in pain. 

“He claims that he was attacked by a giant rat!” I said incredulously. “How many pints did he have for Heaven's sake?”

Sherlock looked at me pointedly.

“Assuming as seems likely that Mr. Darwin is correct”, he said, “it is mathematically improbable that _homo sapiens_ is the only species to survive the lottery that is evolution. As we push into ever more remote parts of the world, the more likely it is that we may stumble across some of our less successful cousins. Just as we diverged from the ape family, so somewhere further back humanity and rats must have had a common mammalian ancestor.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“Do you think that that was what poor Mr. Ballen-Wyre did?” I asked. “Or that he purchased some strange rat-human creature that had been found out East?”

Sherlock frowned.

“I very much fear so”, he said. “If the thing did come to England courtesy of Captain Warner and his ship then that explains a lot. The only inconsistency is that this attack took place over two miles from that on the captain and nearly three from the one on Mr. Ballen-Wyre. I would not have expected such a creature to move so far, as presumably victims were equally available nearby. Hunters are rational creatures or they starve.”

“Maybe the Giant Rat of Sumatra needs a giant-sized hunting area?” I suggested. Sherlock shook his head.

“I have an idea”, he said. “It depends very much on when the next attack takes place.”

“You think that there will be more attacks?” I asked worriedly.

“I am sure of it!”

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We interviewed the sailor who had been attacked but obtained nothing new from him. He stuck to his story of a giant rat, complete with giant tail. I privately thought that some of his shipmates had been playing a joke on him but as the month progressed I was forced to revise that opinion. For Sherlock's prediction about further attacks proved horribly accurate. 

The third attack had been on a Friday, and on each Friday of that cold November there was a further one. On the seventh a gentleman walking his sister home from church were attacked but the giant rat or whatever it was fled when the lady screamed for help and jabbed it with her umbrella. On the fourteenth a female prostitute was found dead having been severely mauled, which of course led to a resurgence in Ripper speculation in the newspapers. By the twenty-first people were unwilling to go out and a young clerk was only saved from being the next victim because a policeman heard his cries for help and came running while blowing his whistle which presumably scared the creature off. A middle-aged businessman returning home from the City was severely mauled in an attack a further seven days later but was saved when passers-by hurried to his assistance. Like the previous victim he recovered from his injuries after some time in hospital.

During this time Sherlock was investigating something to do with all these attacks, although unusually he kept it from me. I knew that the attacks were unsettling him, not just because of their very nature but due to the fact that I had to travel into this area to reach some of my clients and he feared for me personally. I promised to take extra care when near any of the attack sites and even started taking my gun with me just to make his feel less uneasy. I told myself that every day except Friday was safe, but I feared that with my luck I might just end up being the one victim who broke the pattern.

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It was the first Thursday in December and the city was tensing up for what might be the next attack. It was a writing day for me but the grim autumnal chill sapped my energy and the pages remained stubbornly blank beneath my pen. The sun had set and I was giving silent thanks for a warm fire and a good dinner when my friend spoke.

“I think that I may have solved the case.”

I looked up sharply.

“The Giant Rat killings?” I asked.

“Yes”, he said. “You examined the bodies of the first two victims did you not?”

I shuddered at the memories.

“What was left of them”, I corrected.

“You said that you found a piece of cloth caught in Captain Warner's moustache?” Sherlock said.

“Yes”, I said. “What of it?”

“We are going hunting”, he said. “You will need your gun, and make sure that it is fully loaded.”

That worried me, especially when I saw Sherlock taking out his own revolver and loading it. He did not normally bring it on our adventures, which suggested that whatever we were coming up against needed several bullets to take it down. It was not just the cold December air that made me shiver.

We hired a cab which took us to an old warehouse down in the docks. Once we were inside Sherlock opened the bag he had brought with him. I did not know what to expect, but it was not what he pulled out.

“Books?” I queried. He looked at me.

“We may be in for a wait of several hours”, he said. “If all goes well we may have more than one bird in the bag before the night is out.”

He handed me my favourite Aeschylus and I sat down on a rickety-looking wooden chair by a window that was so dirty that it barely admitted any light at all, even after Sherlock had given it a quick wipe-down. Luckily the sky was clear and the moon although not full shone brightly. Our vigil began.

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There had been two ships by the docks when we had arrived and some hours later there were signs of activity on one of them. It must have been close to midnight, an unusual time to load or unload anything that was not illegal I thought. Four men came off the ship and a fifth man emerged from the darkness to greet them. There was the sound of conversation then the shortest of the four took the coat he was holding and began to slip it on. 

Except that it was no ordinary coat. I gasped, loud in the silence of the huge building. He was donning the costume of a giant rat!

“So _that_ was it!” I hissed as man became vermin. “The whole thing was a set-up to hide their nefarious dealings!”

Even though I could not see it I knew that Sherlock was smiling in the darkness. 

“The only road out is the one we came in on”, he whispered, “and the back door of this place faces onto it. Once our 'rat' has moved to secure tonight's victim we shall be ready for him.”

I nodded and readied myself for action.

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Action there was, but not what either of us had been expecting. After a further ten minutes there was what sounded like a loud hiss from somewhere nearby and all five men looked up in surprise. The next instant something charged from the shadows and was amongst them, biting and tearing as they all tried to flee in panic. There was the sound of two gunshots, both muffled as if at close range, then the sound of snarling and men screaming followed by a further two shots. The whole thing lasted for what seemed like an age but what was, more probably, under a minute before all was silent again. Sherlock and I looked at each other, readied our weapons and made our way out of the warehouse.

The scene that greeted us was horrific. The five men or what was left of them lay all about us but my attention was drawn to a sixth body on the edge of the quayside, which was far from human. It was as if someone had taken a rat and simply decided to make it three-quarter human-sized. It was perhaps mercifully almost dead; Sherlock did not hesitate before pushing it over the edge with his foot and it disappeared with a splash into the dark water. He remained staring after it, presumably to make sure it was gone.

I quickly assessed the five men. Two including the one half into the rat costume were dead while the third was beyond all mortal help. The fourth was not badly injured and had merely been stunned into unconsciousness. I turned to the fifth who was bleeding badly. 

Even though I had never met the man, I knew that face from the files that I had read. It was Professor James Moriarty.

I hesitated. The world seemed to slow down.

“John”, Sherlock said quietly, “you are a doctor. You know what you have to do.”

Damn him for reminding me, I did. Never had I wanted more to disobey the maxim of First Do No Harm but I could not let a fellow human being die, however vile. The moment a doctor started taking it upon himself to choose who should live and die he was on the road where good intentions paved the way to Hell. It went against every fibre of my being but I knew that I had to try and save him.

Sometimes I hated my job!

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I managed to patch Professor Moriarty up then Sherlock and I lifted him and his sole surviving shipmate on board the ship he had come off, where we found two beds to lay them on. Neither of us spoke as we worked; I was fighting my own inner demons and my friend was understandingly silent. We left them and repaired to the nearest police-station where we handed over the rat costume and explained what had happened, edited of course to exclude what we knew to have made the attack. Once a group of policeman and a police doctor had been dispatched and we had given our statements, we left for Baker Street.

It was after three in the morning when we finally stumbled into our room and never had it felt more welcoming. I would have gone straight to my room and crashed onto my bed but Sherlock restrained me with a vice-like grip.

“John”, he said calmly, “you did what you had to do. You are too good a man to have done anything else.”

He steered me over to the cold fireside and quickly laid a fire for us both then poured us each a large whisky. I downed mine in a single shot even though it burnt my throat.

“I wanted to though!” I almost snarled. “I am little better than the thing that you pushed into the Thames!”

I was startled when he suddenly shot across the gap between us and grabbed me harshly by the shoulders. His blue eyes bored into my hazel ones.

“I knew that you never would”, he said firmly. “I have always had faith in you, John. Why do you have so little in yourself?”

I stared back at him, shocked. He let go of me and I pulled myself to my feet, standing close to him. Then I broke, falling into his arms and sobbing. He froze for a moment then held me gently.

I do not know how long we just stood there – given what happened next it must have been at least ten minutes – but there was a knock at the door and we sprang apart as if we had both been scalded. It was our landlady's niece Miss Thackeray.

“Aunt Violet saw you come in and made you some coffee”, she said, bringing in a tray with a coffee-pot, some cups and two plates one of which – Heavens to Betsy! - had a steaming piece of chocolate cake with Mrs. Hudson's insanely delicious chocolate custard all over it while the other one contained a whole load of bacon rashers. I drew a ragged breath while Sherlock thanked her, and she withdrew. We ate in some silence before I spoke.

“How did you know?” I asked. He sat back. 

“I initially dismissed the idea of the giant rat being real”, he admitted ruefully. “I suspected that the first attack was a set-up because it was so convenient, especially after the cloth you found.”

I stared at him in confusion.

“Convenient?” I asked.

“That the captain of the ship that brought in a mysterious cargo should then be the man to meet his Maker struck me as rather _too_ timely”, Sherlock said. “In reality the man was attacked from behind by someone coming up and chloroforming him with a soaked cloth, then taking the body somewhere nearby so that they could fake a rodent attack. I had suspected some other cargo being smuggled into the country. In reality Professor Moriarty intended to use the creature as cover for his own activities so could not risk the one man who might know of its existence talking. The second incident, that against Mr. Ballen-Wyre, was the actual creature attack and it was that that showed me it was probably all too real.”

“The other attacks were all staged?” I asked. He nodded.

“The fact that they always occurred on a Friday struck me as very odd”, he said. “Rodents are notoriously hungry, and the bigger they are the more they need to consume. If a dangerous creature is known to hunt in a certain area then potential prey tends for obvious reasons to avoid it. I then made inquiries as to which ships always returned to port on that day. I nearly misfired because I found nothing, and only later did I realize my error. Since the attacks took place in the small hours of Friday morning the ship might dock any time on _Thursday_ , and sure enough I found the 'St. Benedikt' which makes a weekly crossing to Rotterdam, and which as you saw was one of the ships at the quayside.”

“I wonder why he did it”, I mused. “Apart from his obvious preference for evil, there seems little in the way of motive.”

He looked pointedly at me. I felt a sudden chill.

“He knew that you often visited the area”, he said slowly. “If you were attacked and killed, it would have been considered just an unlucky further victim of this creature, a death in a sequence of deaths as we have seen so often before.”

“Where does one hide a leaf but in a forest?” I sighed. “Is there any chance of establishing his guilt, do you think?”

He shook his head.

“Like most of his business interests his connection will be via a number of other people”, he said. “Indeed I very much fear that should Satan decide that he does not need the competition and the man recover, it will be difficult to prove he was guilty of anything other than meeting strangers involved in some bizarre prank.”

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Regrettably in this instance Sherlock was proven right again. I had saved the life of his arch-enemy although at least we were granted a respite of some months while he recovered. The police indeed failed prove any link between him and the owners of the ship. I had overseen the killing of one giant rat but had had to save the life of a second. I had little idea as to how close I was to regretting that fact even further.

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	18. Interlude: Too Good To Be True

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mrs. Hudson is still on her guard – which is just as well!

_[Narration by Mrs. Violet Hudson]_

Being a landlady means making judgements about people often on little in the way of facts, especially after all that to-do about Sally and her murderous brother. So even though the fellow before me _looked_ all right, something was off. I could just feel it.

“I shall have to let you know, Mr. Harrabin”, I said politely. “I only posted the sign in the window yesterday yet yours is the third inquiry into renting the room. I promised the other two applicants that I would at least do them the courtesy of interviewing them, and the notice does quite clearly state that subject to someone being acceptable it will be first come, first served.”

“I quite understand”, the man before me said. His oily, self-satisfied voice did not inspire me, either, let alone the fact that he seemed to have perfumed his hair for some reason. “But you will let me know?”

“By the end of the week”, I said firmly. “I am meeting one of them tomorrow and one Thursday.”

He left his card and bowed himself out. Jo, bless her, held her tongue until he had gone.

“You did not say that you had any other tenants for Room Three, aunt”, she said, looking curiously at me.

“I have not”, I said. “Yet.”

She looked even more confused.

“Something about that man did not ring true”, I said. “Can you take a telegram to the post office for me?”

“Of course”, she said.

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Miss Clementine St. Leger had assisted me over Sally, who had also turned out to be rather more than she had seemed at first. In that case my suspicions had been proven right; her supposed boyfriend had in fact been her brother and they were planning to try to kill Mr. Holmes, which was why they had both been dispatched to where they belonged. Miss St. Leger had confirmed their backgrounds for me and the attack had been prevented; during my meeting with her she had warned me to remain on my guard and to not hesitate to contact her if I came across anything remotely suspicious. Which I felt Mr. Harrabin had been.

It turned out that I had again been right in my suspicions. Miss St. Leger informed me – within an impressive two hours - that 'Mr. Harrabin' was in fact an alias (one of the things that had triggered an alarm bell had been that his references had looked almost _too_ good), and that he worked for the same top crime lord who had employed Sally and her brother. She was also kind enough to refer to me a lady who needed a room for some time so that I had an excuse to refuse my unwanted tenant. Miss Denmark therefore moved into the empty room while Miss St. Leger sorted out a more permanent tenant for me.

I also made sure that I had plenty of ammunition for my pistol.

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	19. Case 178: Family Ties ☼

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1890\. In between having his brains sucked out through his dick by his insatiable lover, Mr. Lucifer Garrick has to deal with a new threat to his cousin Sherlock – yet another Moriarty!

_[Narration by Mr. Lucifer Garrick, Esquire]_

I lay there naked and broken, spend from Lord alone knows what number orgasm splattering my poor body. With what little was left of my brain I did not know which was the more annoying; the fact that I could not move or the smug look on Benji's face as he loomed over me, eyeing my cock far too lasciviously..... oh no! Please, no! Lord have mercy!

The Lord may have done but, as per usual, my towering tormentor did not!

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Once he had carried me to and from the bathroom Benji set about getting me some food (for all that he was the best lover a man ever had, he was useless in the kitchen beyond simple things like sandwiches and the like). I lay there and mused on what to do about yet another problem that would be arriving to these shores shortly.

One of the many, many wonderful things about Benji was that he never pushed to know about my job (he was usually too busy pushing in other areas, the dog!) especially as he was aware that quite a few parts of it were downright dangerous. The Panama hat apart (which had come to be a symbol that he could do what he liked with me, and which I always wore when I knew he would be coming round after any formal event that he had been forced to attend), he somehow seemed to know instinctively what I wanted even before we spoke, whether it was the hard and sweaty sex of last night (and twice this morning) or the gentle cuddling when he just held me and we lay there naked together. I was forty-two years old now and he was still only twenty-seven, which especially when it came to refractory time was just unfair!

Fortunately once Benji had got some food inside of me I was almost back with the land of the living, which was good as he had to go and do his regular job. He was barely out of the door when my cousin Carl turned up. I would have suspected him of waiting – he not only looked like me but could be as devious when the need arose – but he looked surprised at my less than perfect appearance before nodding.

“I thought that I saw a certain Mr. Jackson-Giles leaving as I came up”, he grinned. “Fancy a trip to the gymnasium?”

I glared at him. He was so not funny!

“You know damn well why that is not an option for today, and likely tomorrow as well”, I said testily. “Worse, Bertha is due next week which means another christening and another heavy emotional pounding thereafter!”

It had actually been two years since the birth of Peter, Benji's fifth child, after which Bertha had taken ill. Benji had insisted that they not try for a child last year (he had certainly taken out all his sexual frustrations on me as a result!) but now normal service had been resumed. He always looked at me like I had hung the moon for him when he came round post-christening and I would of course greet him wearing that damn hat - having first made sure to book a couple of extra days off work first!

I was so damn lucky!

“From what goes on in some of my barracks that I always 'miss', I doubt even you and Mr. Ram-Rod could surprise me, cousin”, he said, far too cheerily for ten o' clock of a morning. “No, I had an early-morning call myself today, although thankfully not as 'thorough' as yours seems to have been.”

I glared at him or at least tried to; my facial muscles were like those elsewhere still recovering. _How_ were we related? Oh yes, we were not. Good!

“The ever efficient Miss St. Leger came round”, he said much to my surprise. “She was worried about one of my soldiers, a Private Sean Major.”

“What about him?” I yawned. “Sorry.”

“I am thinking that we should employ your man when we finally come up against the Germans”, he smiled. “He could sexually exhaust a good part of their army before it reached the front! It is the private's mother who is at issue, an Irishwoman. Her maiden name was Smith but she was also the first cousin of a certain Professor Moriarty!”

My eyes widened in shock and I sat up rather too fast, evincing a manly yelp of surprise (yes it was!) that someone could bloody well stop smirking at however big he was, damn him!

“The evil professor already has six kin in various places abroad”, I said, “all of whom are as bad as him, at least to some degree. Now there is a seventh?”

“The thing is, Major did not know of her until recently”, Carl said. “She died giving birth to a younger brother when he was only two and the father remarried soon after that. It was only when one of the sons of that marriage looked him up and said he was a half-brother that he found out - and Major's first reaction was to go straight round to see the professor!”

I did not like that at all. Any Moriarty was a bad thing whether named as such or not, but one trained to kill people for a living was even more so.

“I can have him transferred over to Ireland”, Carl said, “but you know how the Army is. It will take time, weeks if not months.”

“Not if we cause an emergency”, I said, thinking quickly. “Some separatist bomb plot over there that necessitates a whole lot of soldiers at once. That way he could be out of the country in days.”

“He would surely suspect”, Carl countered. “He finds out who his murderous cousin is and suddenly he is being moved out of the way.”

“So much the better”, I said. “We both know how Moriarty works; act now and clean up the mess later. He will order him to take a shot at Sherlock.”

Carl looked at me dubiously.

“You think that we should not let him know of this?” he asked.

“He has more than enough problems on his plate just now, especially after Moriarty's latest schemes to target Watson putting him on edge”, I said. “Luckily Guy Fawkes's Night is coming up, so there will be lots of loud bangs around. If you can arrange something in the newspapers tomorrow that will cause him and some men to be shipped over on the sixth, he will think that that will give him the perfect cover – especially when he 'accidentally' discovers that Sherlock is calling on you in your rooms there that evening!”

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I contacted Miss St. Leger who, understandably, was not happy about us not telling Sherlock about all this. The saucy woman said that she would overlook it this once provided she was occasionally allowed to use Benji as a messenger boy (he always passed her offices on his way to and from my house), and that she would be grateful if he could wear that tight top of his again. And the shorts. Honestly, some people these days thought about nothing but That.

All right, all right. Pots and kettles, I know. On the plus side, I rather liked that top and the way he almost burst out of it when he pulled it on. And those shorts always made ladies promenading in the park atop and ogle him, much to the annoyance of the gentlemen accompanying them. Best of all the whole delicious package could be unwrapped by me when we got back and he.....

Ahem!

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On the day of the attack Carl's batman, a trustworthy fellow called Price, met me when I arrived at his barracks on the day. We had arranged that he would tell the rest of the barracks (including Major) that their commanding officer was not to be disturbed (given Carl's terrible temper when bothered without a good reason, such as a major war or an apocalypse, they would all keep well clear). Then we sat and waited, listening to the explosions outside as people celebrated one man's failed attempt to blow up parliament. Like Sherlock had once told me, in this day and age they would more likely celebrate someone who had succeeded!

Finally there was a knock at the door. I nodded at Carl.

 _“What?”_ he roared (even I flinched at that).

The door opened and Private Sean Major entered. He was not much to look at; not yet thirty but already going grey and generally unprepossessing. Unsurprisingly he was armed. He nodded to his commander then his face fell.

 _“Well?”_ Carl demanded testily, looking as if he was seriously considering grievous bodily harm unless his disturber came up with a good reason for his presence within the next five seconds.

“Er, they said that you sent for me, sir”, the private tried.

I guessed that he must have had that one ready from the relative lack of hesitation. Not that that would save him.

“Oh yes, I did”, Carl said, to the fellow's evident confusion. “Give me your gun, private.”

The soldier looked bemused at that, but with his quarry clearly not in the room he handed it over. Carl took and checked it, then pointed it at him.

“Sir?” the private said, clearly alarmed. “Wh... what is it?”

“You came here to shoot my brother Sherlock”, Carl said coolly. “My cousin Luke here will be witness to what is about to happen. You were prepared to kill for a great sum of money from your evil cousin. Look over to the table, please.”

The soldier glanced quickly across to the table where a document was laid out, then back at his commanding officer.

“You have two choices”, Carl said, in a voice so cold that even I shuddered. “Either you will make a full and frank confession of your dealings with the professor and throw yourself on the mercies of an English jury. I doubt that your cousin will let you live long enough to face them, but if you lie down with dogs you are highly likely to wake up with fleas, so you should have thought of that. Your second choice is that I will shoot you.”

I could see him weighing up his chances of escape. They could have been summarized in the word 'none'. He took a slight step back towards the door and Carl fired. The private yelled – but nothing happened.

“We made sure that your own gun was loaded with blanks before you came here”, Carl said, laying aside the villain's weapon and taking out his own pistol. You now have ten seconds from when I finish speaking to state your agreement to my terms. Failure to do so means that I will shoot you with the real bullets in this gun. Hopefully in your short time here you will have learned that I do not do what some people call 'bluffing'. Your time starts now.”

I could see him mouthing the seconds down as Carl silently counted them out. When it reached three he made a sudden bolt for the door.

It was his last ever mistake in this world.

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“Even if we do get the better of the most evil of them”, I said once we had filled out the inevitable paperwork concerning the tragic incident of a rogue private who had tried to shoot his commanding officer and had been shot in self-defence, “there are as I said six more out there.”

“But they will take time to learn of their relative's demise”, Carl said, “especially with what we have planned for them. And during that time they will be unaware that death is stalking them, right up to the moment when it is too late. Just like the late and unlamented Private Major.”

I really hoped that he was right in that.

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	20. Case 179: The Adventure Of Podsnappery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1890\. Yet another front opens in the ongoing conflict with the vile Professor Moriarty, as a man buys a house for no apparent reason and a friend of John's surprises Sherlock with a gun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mentioned also as dealings with the cunning Mr. Jonathan Clay.

_[Narration by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire]_

Before I begin this next instalment of the ongoing struggle against the vile Professor Moriarty, John has pointed out I should supply our readers with an explanation about the curious word in the title of this story which, sadly, has since disappeared from common usage. Podsnappery was a term for the act of ignoring inconvenient facts while maintaining a virtuous and/or socially elevated air. It can still be found in some older dictionaries - _just before what John calls its supplanter, the word 'politics'!_

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It is one of the strange parts of human behaviour that, at a time when some in society (and in certain so-called 'developed' countries who should know better) were sinking ever lower in their standards, rules were coming into play to prevent barbarism in open conflict. Hence the then recent signing of the Geneva Conventions which, although they could not stop atrocities, made it clear that nations who committed them could expect to find themselves in bad odour for some time thereafter.

It was a similar matter in my ongoing war – the word is not inappropriate - with Professor Moriarty. He had his family and I had mine, and there was an understanding (which after certain recent matters involving chocolate drops and large rodents had to be codified in no uncertain terms) that any further actions against those I loved would lead to him becoming both childless and a widower very soon after. Things had gone better than I had hoped thus far but at this point in the proceedings a complication arose that I could not only have done very well without, and which again threatened the man that I loved. My beloved John.

The London criminal fraternity like any organization is a structured affair and often saw people rise and fall through its rank, although the methods of obtaining 'promotion' or ridding oneself of a rival tended to be more direct that in most institutions (or so I hoped!). I had kept a watchful eye out for any potential future sources of trouble and in recent years I had been worried by the rise of a Mr. Jonathan Clay. Most of the criminal fraternity – Professor Moriarty apart - had at least a spark of humanity buried somewhere inside them but he had none whatsoever. Even Miss St. Leger had told me that after just seeing him at a distance she had felt a strong desire to go home and have a long hot bath. The saucy woman had asked if Luke might make Benji available for her; she really was terrible at times!

Mr. Clay _claimed_ to be of noble birth and, given the inability of some (many) in the upper class to keep it in their trousers, this may well have been true. His ancestry may have been questionable but his talents and his abuse of them were not, and by the time of this our final encounter he was one of the leading proponents of crime in the city. But underneath the smooth exterior he was a villain through and through; even our recent acquaintance Mr. Marcus Crowley feared him and that was saying something.

I did not doubt that Mr. Clay would be working for or at least allied with Professor Moriarty, at least in the short term. The villains shared an absolute lack of humanity that made their joining forces inevitable, although I did not doubt for a second that Mr. Clay would stab the professor in the back at the first opportunity of replacing him nor that the 'favour' would be returned in kind. Birds of a feather flock together, as they say.

I did not fear Mr. Clay myself but when Miss St. Leger warned me that he was turning his attentions towards John, that was another matter entirely. Unfortunately (and unlike Professor Moriarty) Mr. Clay had no family or even friends who could act as 'leverage' against him and his 'business partner' would of course disavow all knowledge of his actions should he do anything to hurt the man I loved. He had to be stopped and quickly – but how?

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Proof that it never rains but it pours came at this time when both John and I were stressed enough already. I generally have a low regard for businessmen and had kept a watchful eye on both the 'Strand' magazine and John's publishers Brett & Burke, who had brought my friends great works to a nation that for some reason was fascinated by my doings. For at this stressful time he had a problem with his publishers.

_(On reading my notes for this case John, being John, made a remark about far too many people being fascinated by my doings, which was unfortunately his standard level of humour! I wondered sometimes just why I kept him around.)_

_(Apart from the bacon and coffee, obviously)._

Mr. Jeremiah Brett and Mr. Johnson Burke still owned the book-publishers who bore their names but at this time two of their employees, a Mr. and Mrs. Nicholas Saunders, decided to leave and set up their own business. That in itself would not have been a problem except that during their dealings with John they had managed to inveigle him into signing a document which meant that he would only write for the company that they worked for, and they now demanded that he leave Brett & Burke to join The White Rose Press. He was rightly upset by this and refused, but I knew that it was making him even more miserable at a time when he was also worrying about me.

Matters were predictably made worse by my useless lounge-lizard of a brother Randall from whom I was foolish enough to request help in this matter. Considering that I had helped him in the past many more times than I had asked for anything in return I felt I was more than entitled to such aid, but my recent refusals to leave London and John (not in that order) to be at his beck and call had apparently rankled, and he had refused. My cousin Luke willingly stepped in and I had no compunction in allowing him to ruin the new company – people who would deal in such a way should not be in business, in my opinion. But I would not forgive Randall for that and I resolved that, if I came through the trials ahead of me, I would make him pay. Although I was torn between some form of physical pain or the mental anguish of making him endure more of Mother's stories. 

The reader is quite correct. That was not even close to being a contest.

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John's work as a doctor made him a horribly easy target for the villainous Mr. Clay, often taking him across the city and to places where he might well be attacked before any help could be summoned. When Miss St. Leger spoke to us about the threat he took it seriously enough but (I suppose, understandably) did not wish it to stop him from helping others. In the end I had to compromise; he would only take existing patients and would always carry his gun with him whenever he went out. It was not enough for me but I had to accept it. 

It was, I might note, rather unusual to find our roles reversed like this; whenever I was ill John was the one whose 'mother-hen' tendencies exploded at the slightest threat to me, even if I silently loved it because it showed how much that he cared for me. I did not deserve such adoration but I cherished it all the more as a result.

I knew that I should probably not have done it but I employed one of Miss St. Leger's best followers in order to watch if Mr. Clay was indeed monitoring my friend's movements (I knew that he would not employ such a person himself as he preferred to do his own dirty work). They reported back to me that he indeed was and my heart sank. I argued with John over the need to take more care and his annoyance at this hurt more than anything had in a long time. I would say that I slept alone for the first time in ages that night but that would have been the whole truth. 

I did not sleep at all.

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We received some unexpected assistance from a caller at our house the next day but one, which was good as a night back with John had enabled me to catch up on my sleep. 

“Mr. Crowley”, I said, surprised. “What brings you to London? And how is dear Cerberus?”

Our guest, looking as dapper as ever, smiled at us. I was instinctively reminded of the famous line, 'all the better to eat you with'.

“The dear boy is very happy”, our visitor said. “As am I; Sir George Baskerville has sold his estate and removed himself to the North, for which we are both grateful!”

I smiled at that. Our guest looked around our rooms appreciatively.

“Someone is most definitely celebrating Christmas”, he observed.

That was true. John's peculiar weakness at this time of year was that he went a little overboard on Christmas decorations and, while I did not mind one way or the other, I had encouraged his drive this year in light of our present difficulties. He blushed prettily at our visitor's comment.

“But it is business that brings me here today”, the criminal said. “In particular the threat to your good friend the doctor here.”

I did not bother to ask how he knew. It was just one of those things.

“I have been keeping an eye on the vile Mr. Clay too for some time”, Mr. Crowley said. “He has just done something rather odd, even for someone who claims to be descended from one of our more eccentric members of the nobility. He has purchased a house.”

I did not see anything unusual about that, but people like our guest here did not say things without a reason. Mr. Crowley looked at me.

“Mr. Clay, as you know, cannot go five minutes without telling everyone about his supposed noble lineage”, he said. “He has gone through four houses since he became a homeowner, each larger than the one before. Yet now he is purchasing a medium-sized place in Preston Street, not too far from here and barely half the size of the house that he has now. It is totally unlike him.”

I looked across at John.

“You do not have any clients there?” I asked.

“I do not”, he said, “but other doctors in the surgery may.”

“I thought about that too”, Mr. Crowley said. “Given the foul example of Mankind with which Mr. Clay is currently allied, I believe that he may be able to obtain information on patients at your surgery, doctor.”

“Do you have any patients nearby?” I asked John.

“There is old Mrs. Walton in Marigold Place which, I suppose, is not far from there”, he said. “But she prefers to come to the surgery as a rule since she works at a shop just down the road from us.”

“Mr. Clay has had his new house renamed 'Podsnappery'”, our visitor said. “Sometimes I think that the French have one thing right in not allowing certain naming choices, although I suppose that it fits Mr. Clay all too well. I understand from my sources that there were problems with building work on an adjoining or nearby site so his move in has been delayed for at least a week. I also found it curious that on his sole visit to the area thus far, he introduced himself to his neighbours, as 'Mr. Smith'.”

“You believe that he is using this property to lure John in”, I said.

“As I said, it is very unlike him”, Mr. Crowley said. “Leopards do not change their spots.”

“Does he not know that I am not taking new patients?” John asked.

“He must do”, I said. “I am a little surprised that he did not foresee that we might find out about this one way or another.”

“Maybe not”, Mr. Crowley said. “He used the Mr. Smith persona to purchase the house; it had been the property of a gentleman who died recently. He also arranged it through a third party; however that gentleman's brother knows me and felt that I should be informed.”

“Very good of him”, I said. “Thank you for the warning, Mr. Crowley.”

Our guest stood and bowed, then left.

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“We have criminals supporting us against other criminals”, John said once we were alone.

“There are different levels of criminality”, I said, “as there are in most things in life. For example most people would accept two gentlemen who room together, but when one of them openly flaunts his doings in public I am afraid that he will find precious few supporters.”

He sniggered at that.

“Flaunting his doings!” he chuckled.

I shook my head at him. As I said, his schoolboy humour was really appalling at times!

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The more than I thought about it, the less I liked this new house of Mr. Clay's. He must surely have known that John was not taking new or one-off patients and that the surgery had a doctor on emergency standby at all times, so even if he tried to call on their services he would not get John. Miss St. Leger quickly and efficiently researched all the people around 'Podsnappery' for me but they were all that they appeared to be, except possibly for the one two doors down who had a rather strange fetish for women's stockings. And the one some way down the road running a brothel. Quite shameful for a member of parliament, even in this day and age.

I decided to visit the area myself and see if that would help my investigations. While the man that I loved was out helping the people of London I travelled to Goodge Street which, for those who do not know it, is a road heading west off Tottenham Court Road. The area is also not far from our first lodgings together in Montague Street and I was reminiscing of those far-off days – ye Gods, we had left there for Cramer Street in 'Seventy-Six, full twelve years ago! - as I approached a small turning which led off the southern side of the road to Preston Street. Despite the name it was really a _cul-de-sac_ , a short road that ended in a slightly curved row of houses athwart its path that must have looked like a mushroom from above. 

I found 'Podsnappery' easily enough but there seemed nothing unusual about it, except for the smoke coming from the chimney which suggested that someone was at home. That was I knew unlikely to be Mr. Clay himself; it was common practice for people to be employed to occupy houses prior to their owner moving in, in order to deter burglars. Estate agents often arranged such things on a client's behalf, I supposed that some clients might have backed out if their new home was burgled even before they were in it.

I frowned as I stared at the long row of Victorian houses. I was missing something, but what?

'Podsnappery' was the third house from the end and there was a pathway leading off by the end house – 'Maid Of Ale', seriously? - so I decided to go and see what was round the back of the house. This being London I naturally expected more houses, and was surprised to find that there was instead a building-site, with workmen building more town houses along what was the south-western side of a small park. This had to be the building work that was delaying my enemy's moving in. Continuing past it I entered the park and looked at the road-sign to see where I was now:

'Marigold Place'!

What happened next must have lasted barely a couple of minutes, but in my stunned state it seemed much longer. A cab charged into the street at a high if not dangerous speed and swerved around the southern end of the park almost on one wheel, racing a little way down the road before coming to a sharp stop. I was shocked when I recognised the figure who vaulted gymnastically out of the cab, threw some money at the driver and raced up the stairs to knock frantically at the door. It was John's friend and fellow doctor, Peter Greenwood. I hurried towards him but only got a short distance before I heard him swear, apologize to the offended house-owner and leap clear down all three steps. I moved to intercept him.

“What has happened?” I asked anxiously

“John is in danger!” he said. “The surgery got a call for a patient of his here, and after he had gone I asked Mrs. Fotheringay where it was as I had not heard the name before. She said that it was just around the back of Preston Street, which he had told me he had to avoid because there was someone dangerous living there. Damn stupid driver dumped me outside 'Willowbrook' instead of The Willows'! There he is!”

A cold chill gripped my heart as I looked back down the way that I had come. If I could see the back of 'Podsnappery' from here over the houses being built, then the murderous Mr. Clay who I knew was an excellent shot had a clean line of fire on the man I loved – who was coming down the stairs only a few dozen yards away! And there was indeed a man on what had to be the balcony of 'Podsnappery'!

“There!” I exclaimed, taking out my gun in the painfully thin hope that I could hit a target from this far. “The man on the balcony; he wants to kill John!”

I fired more in hope than anything else, thinking that I might create enough confusion for the man I loved to escape. But I had forgotten Doctor Greenwood who had caught me up and to my surprise took the gun from my hand.

 _“Allow me!”_ he said grimly.

Even at this distance I could see that while John was looking around him in confusion, Mr. Clay had only been momentarily disconcerted and was lining up for a second try. But he never got the chance. Doctor Greenwood's first shot caught the arm holding the gun and I actually heard the scream of pain, then he used the other four bullets to pick him off as neatly as if he had been standing right in front of him. As the screams of terrified people echoed around me, Mr. Clay collapsed over his balcony rail and plummeted to the ground far below.

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We both thanked Doctor Greenwood – John had mentioned to me one time that his younger brother was in the army and had trained him up to a high standard but it must have slipped my mind in the horror of the situation – then hurried to the remains of Mr. Jonathan Clay. Surprisingly he was still breathing when we reached him but he was clearly not long for this world and I received one look of pure hatred from that horrible face. I was infinitely glad that he had recognized me at the end, and waited until the light had gone out of his eyes and he was on his way to meet Satan and Mr. Milton Carew in Hell.

Unfortunately we were not out of the woods yet. Not by a long way.

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	21. Case 180: The Adventure Of The French Letters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1890-1891. An unwanted Gallic distraction as the war with Professor Moriarty draws to an end, and John receives a warning from someone vaguely familiar.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mentioned also as a service performed for the French government. Watson's reference to it did not actually say that they appreciated said service!

_[Narration by Doctor John Watson, M.D.]_

Christmas that year was a sombre affair what with my first having to have saved the life of one of the worst excuses for humanity (for which I felt as if my skills had been soiled in some way) and then the attempt on my life by the murderous Mr. Jonathan Clay for which I would forever owe dear Peter for saving my life. I could not shake the growing feeling – the growing _fear_ – that despite our successes against him so far, this business with Professor Moriarty was going to end very, very badly. 

For Christmas that year I bought Sherlock a book on bees that I knew he had had his eye on. His present to me was far, far superior, a set of writing-pens that were 'ergonomically designed' to be easier to hold for long periods of time. I was initially if quietly sceptical but as usual he was right, and the days of my aching hands when my Muse was being more demanding than usual were gone forever.

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I have dated our next case together across the New Year period as it was brought to our attention by a New Year's Eve visit from a surprise governmental visitor – not the perennial plague of my existence Mr. Randall Holmes but his and Sherlock's much more welcome cousin Mr. Lucifer Garrick. My friend had sought the lounge-lizard's assistance over the Clay business and had been rebuffed and had subsequently sent round that the latter was not welcome at Baker Street unless he improved his attitude. Sherlock may also have 'accidentally' passed on certain of the lounge-lizard's more questionable actions to their mother who... well, he had been summonsed to the family home to explain himself, and by some terrible mischance it so happened that the Cov.... Lady Holmes's Writing Circle was holding another of their sessions there that very day. Oh dear how sad never mind.

The festive season had also brought a small bonus in that one of Professor Moriarty's confederates had become so disgusted with him that he had quitted the country. That in itself might not have mattered to the villain except that the fellow had stolen some records and had threatened to pass them on to the Professor's family, who he had to move and settle somewhere else to prevent them finding out his true vile nature. What with the villain also still recovering from his recent dockside mauling, it was a welcome if brief period of relief.

Our guest folded his long limbs into the fireside chair. I wondered if it could be anything urgent; we had bumped into him only two days ago when he had been walking in the park with Mr. Benjamin Jackson-Giles, the fellow who always leered at Sherlock in a way that I did not approve of. Although it would have been truer to say that Mr. Lucifer Garrick had been limping, and having treated his lover more than once I knew full well why. Mrs. Jackson-Giles had recently had their sixth child, a boy called Mark, and because Mr. Garrick was the sort of inconsiderate fellow who shared _everything_ I knew just how the surprisingly emotional Mr. Jackson-Giles had worked out his post-christening angst. Both thoroughly and recently from the way in which Mr. Garrick had very slowly sat down!

“While the infernal Professor Moriarty is temporarily out of commission”, he said, “or at least reduced in his scope of activities as Satan strives to prevent such a rival from joining him, I wondered if you might look into a small matter for a client of mine?”

“You mean Randall'”, Sherlock corrected (I noted that his cousin did not try to deny it). “Who is your client?” 

“The French government”, Mr. Garrick said with a sigh. “They are in a mess. _Again!”_

I thought back to the case of the assassin Huret earlier in the year who had met a fitting end at the hands of the man whose parents he had killed, and also to the traitorous Monsieur Rosberg and his huge, simpering wife. Quite a few of our cases seemed to involve Gallic 'messes'.

“I suppose that this is further fall-out from the Boulanger Affair?” Sherlock asked mirroring my thoughts as usual. His brother nodded.

“You may recall that the Galloping General lost his chance at leading the country because of his infatuation with his mistress”, our visitor said. “Now it seems that he may be about to have his revenge. He is living in Jersey† and the French government has just learned that he managed to obtain certain, shall we say, incriminating documents concerning several leading politicians - and that he is prepared to sell to whoever bids the highest, French or no.”

I thought that basing himself almost within sight of the French coast was rather provocative of the general, especially from my own experience of how governments 'dealt' with what they termed 'annoyances'. Often by moving them six feet under.

“I suppose that our dear friends in Berlin would also love to obtain such information”, Sherlock said dryly. “What sort of incriminating information, pray?”

His cousin hesitated, clearly weighing up whether to trust us with what was likely sensitive information.

“I could always make sure that my next gift of 'supplies' to Benji is not just copious”, Sherlock smiled, “but timed for just after the next little Jackson-Giles's arrival!”

His cousin shuddered at that. I considered that such a cruel move was almost as bad as subjecting our visitor to one of Lady Holmes's terrible stories and damnation if I was not getting another disapproving look from someone!

“It is a sorry tale”, Mr. Garrick said quickly. “There are five ministers implicated; one for sodomy, one for having three wives in different parts of the capital, two for fraud and one for running a brothel.”

“Male or female?” I asked writing furiously. I got a decidedly sharp look.

“Female”, our visitor snapped. “Sherlock, will you take the case?”

“Do you require us to go to France?” my friend asked. “Or Jersey?”

I shuddered at the idea of a sea-crossing, and not just because I knew that I would likely be spending much of it looking down the sides of our ship while waving goodbye to any recent meals. I would of course have done it for Sherlock, but it was still horrible.

“No”, his cousin said, much to my relief. “The General's valet is coming to London with the information or copies of it, and is presumably planning to hawk them round the major embassies to see what he can get for them. An Anglo-French fellow from what little we know of him; he has not been in the post that long. His name is Mr. Shea Henderson.”

The name was unfamiliar to me, yet I detected the slightest change in Sherlock's attitude for some reason. I wondered why.

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“I do not see how you can succeed in this case”, I said once his cousin had left. “Obviously the general has the original documents and unless the British or French governments empower you to bid on one or other of their behalves, you cannot actually _do_ much.”

“Luke gave me a figure and said that I could bid up to that amount to obtain the documents”, he said. “For the British it would be important leverage.”

“Leverage?” I asked, surprised. “Why? I thought that they were our allies now?”

“Today's allies can become tomorrow's enemies”, he said, a little sententiously I thought. “As I have noted before, in recent years the French have established themselves in both east and central Africa and there is every prospect that they may seek to unite those lands. With the British pushing north from the Cape and south back into Sudan, there may well be conflict somewhere along the upper Nile before the decade is out. By buying and then returning the documents, our government would be demonstrating its good faith.”

 _How noble_ , I thought.

“Not that they would not keep copies!” he added with a chuckle.

Not that noble, then. Colour me astonished!

“I am more concerned for both the valet and his employers”, he said, frowning. “As we both know, governments are dangerous creatures, and when cornered like this they may lash out.”

His words were as so often to prove strangely prescient.

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There was a small but surprising event the following day when Sherlock received a belated letter of apology from his brother Randall. I privately thought that it was wrong of my friend to always so readily forgive the lounge-lizard for his long, long, long, long, _long_ list of failings, but apparently this time the forgiveness was in short supply because he refused to re-admit him to the house at all. When I looked questioningly at him he said that his brother's first communication had implied a slur on my own abilities for treating the injured Professor Moriarty and that he had shredded the offending telegram before returning its remains. He could be scary when roused and I silently loved him for standing up for me like that. 

Three days after this Sherlock received a message from Mr. Garrick.

“He states that Mr. Henderson was welcomed at the Russian Embassy yesterday”, he said. “Officially because he claims to have an ancestor in Russian America or Alaska as it has become. He also claims to be a distant cousin of President Harrison.”

“According to Mr. Darwin, we are all cousins of the current American president if one goes back enough millennia”, I observed. “But it is a passable subterfuge even if it will fool nobody.”

We had a quiet breakfast but it was interrupted at the finish by the unexpected and noisy arrival of Mr. Garrick who looked totally out of sorts. Clearly something calamitous had happened.

“Mr. Henderson's room at La Parisienne was turned over yesterday evening!” he said exasperatedly.

I confess that I was more than a little surprised at that as I knew that particular hotel which featured often in the social pages which I may or may not have glanced at on the odd occasion if I had a spare moment. It was one of the most exclusive in London, renowned for guarding the privacy of its guests most fiercely and, in one famous case, actually shooting at a newspaper journalist who had been trying to get at one guest. Not that I myself had not been tempted to take similar actions against some members of the British press myself except perhaps for the 'Times' (excellent book reviews, by the way).

“Did he not place the papers in the hotel safe?” Sherlock asked, looking at me for some reason.

“I do not know what happened”, his cousin admitted, “but he told the constable who interviewed him that the papers were safe. Presumably he secreted them somewhere that the thief did not find them; perhaps he even slept with them! But that is not all. Guess what else happened last night?”

Sherlock sighed in a put-upon manner. His cousin made what was clearly a visible effort to not roll his eyes, but earned himself a sharp look. I was sure that I heard my friend mutter the word 'supplies', because our visitor definitely turned pale.

“I forgot, the great detective does not guess”, he said quickly. “Well let me tell you. The home of General Boulanger and his mistress was blown to kingdom come!”

“Was anyone killed?” I asked anxiously. He shook his head.

“Fortunately the couple were attending a ball and whoever did it had the 'kindness' - if that is the right word - to set off a small explosion outside first that caused the three servants to come out of the house. They were injured by falling masonry but none of them seriously. So this means that almost certainly the only actual documents pertaining to the scandals are those in the possession of Mr. Shea Henderson.”

“It rather looks as if the French government may have misled you somewhat”, Sherlock said dryly. “Clearly they or their confederates are determined to eliminate this threat, and by whatever means necessary. The physical proof is vital, especially with the General's standing as low as it is just now. How is this Mr. Henderson?”

“We have put a police guard outside his room and he himself has gone out for a walk”, his brother said. “Another policeman is accompanying him. I have to get back to Whitehall and monitor the situation but I thought that I had better come here first.”

Sherlock nodded, and his brother stood up and left.

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My friend rang for a maid once his brother was gone and dispatched a telegram. I wondered why he had not walked to the post-office himself to send it but I assumed that he had to have had his reasons.

Half an hour later we had another visitor. It was one of Those Mornings.

“Mr. Shea Henderson”, Betty announced.

The fellow who entered looked vaguely familiar, and it took me a moment or two to recall just who he reminded me of. Mr. Shelton Hallam, who we had met with Mr. Jimmy Douglas in that haunting Nottinghamshire wood only a short while back. This fellow too bore a passable resemblance to Sherlock except again for the hair and the eyes, our visitor being a ginger-haired fellow with strange, almost orange eyes that matched his hair. He placed a large brief-case on his lap and nodded to us.

“Mr. Sherlock Holmes”, he said, and he had barely a trace of a French accent. “Doctor Watson. It is a pleasure to meet you both.”

“Thank you for coming, sir”, Sherlock smiled. “I believe that I may be of service to you in this your hour of need.”

My friend's words seemed straightforward enough, yet I sensed that in some way he knew this fellow in some way. Yet weirdly I also felt that there was no danger from this visitor, although I could not even have begun to explain how or why I felt such a thing.

“I do indeed need your help, sir”, Mr. Henderson said, glancing at me for some reason, “and I know that both you and your doctor friend can be trusted. The law is useless in this case, except for that young policeman who is waiting outside, because they would want to _know_ things. I can tell you the straight honest truth and as you said in your message, you can advise me.”

“I will certainly do my best”, Sherlock said. “I understand that you only recently came into the General's employ?”

“His last valet felt compelled to resign after his life had been threatened”, our visitor said. “I was visiting France from my home in the United States for a time, and did not initially wish to take the post until it was agreed that after I had served my master in this particular task, I might return home.”

I did not think that he had that much of an American accent, which I also thought odd. My thoughts must have somehow shown in my face.

“I moved to the United States only a few years back, doctor”, our visitor said smoothly. “I am sure that in time I will acquire the local accent.”

_How had he known what I was thinking?_

“Pray tell us what happened concerning the explosion”, Sherlock said with a slight smile.

The valet took a deep breath.

“My master's house was destroyed last night and I can only thank a merciful God in Heaven that he and the lady that he loves were not inside it”, he said fervently. “Gentlemen, the documents in that house were the originals and no copies were made. All that I have with me is a brief summary sheet of the facts of each case, which would never stand up in court.”

 _But it might still do immeasurable damage in the court of public opinion_ , I thought.

Sherlock pressed his long fingers together.

“How did you keep that sheet safe last night?” he asked.

“Some members of my family have been gifted with what is known as The Sight”, he said. “There are certain events in the future that I can see and it is both a blessing and a curse.”

 _Just like Mr. Hallam_ , I thought. Stranger and stranger.

“How could that be a curse?” I wondered aloud.

He turned to me. There was the briefest of pauses before he spoke.

“As well as a premonition, I also receive a warning as to whether or not I should try to do anything to avoid what I know will happen”, he said. “Sometimes I see the people who will be affected and I know that they are both good and true, yet I cannot save them. That... is painful.”

I had the uneasy feeling that he was alluding to someone other than his master and mistress back in France.

“It does not need the Sight to foresee that once someone realizes that they have no documents, then they may take a more deadly revenge on your master and mistress”, Sherlock said. “And possibly even against your good self, sir, if they perceive you to be a threat. You are headed back to the United States straight from England?”

“I have a friend in North Carolina, down on the east coast”, our visitor said. “Then I am completing my move out west, where I have recently purchased a house. A charming little place on the edge of the town of Lincoln‡, in the state of Nebraska¶.”

Sherlock eyed the valet's brief-case thoughtfully.

“When you go”, he said, “leave that behind. When you get back to your hotel you may care to ask them for an evening edition of the 'Times'. I think that you may find it quite interesting. You may call and collect your case at ten o' clock tomorrow morning.”

He looked at my friend curiously and there almost seemed to be some strange communication between them. Then he placed his brief-case on the chair, bade us farewell and left.

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“Is it safe for him to be out there?” I asked anxiously. “Even with a police guard?”

“I am almost certain that he will have been followed from the hotel, most probably by the agents of more than one country”, Sherlock said with a smile. “Indeed they have quite probably been falling over each other in the process! They will all note that he left his brief-case here and will presume that he left the documents in it.”

“Might they not try to raid here, then?” I asked worriedly.

Sherlock chuckled and pulled up a notepad on which he began to write. I waited patiently for him to finish whereon he folded the paper and handed it to me.

“I will stay and guard this politically-sensitive empty brief-case”, he smiled, “and you will go to the offices of the 'Times' and post this for the evening edition. You will then call in at the offices of Martinson & Brackendale and spend ten minutes inside the building before returning here.”

I stared at him expectantly but apparently he was not inclined to elucidate. Rather grumpily I left on my errands. And it remained a mystery until I got to the newspaper offices and they read back to me what he had written.

Damnation but the fellow was a genius!

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At ten o' clock sharp the following morning Mr. Henderson returned to Baker Street, his policeman no longer in tow. He had a broad smile on his face in sharp contrast with his anxiety the day before.

“I knew that I could trust you, sir”, he smiled. “A most brilliant move!”

Sherlock's newspaper item had been a statement informing all who needed to know that he, acting on behalf of the Her Britannic Majesty's Government, had purchased the sole rights to the Boulanger documents. Furthermore as Mr. Henderson was now a client he had taken the precaution of sending copies of the files to at least ten different lawyers around the United Kingdom with instructions that if anyone took action against the valet, his family or his employers, then they were to immediately supply all the details to various national and regional newspapers. I understood the stop at Holmes's lawyers as well, now.

“But what about the Germans?” I worried. “Might they not be quite happy to see this made public?”

“Mr. Henderson's summary contained some interesting facts about the behaviour of those in Berlin”, Sherlock explained. “Those have been covertly passed on to them; I doubt that their few allies on the Continent would feel quite so inclined to trust them in the future if that sort of behaviour came out. Even when the current crop of politicians in Paris fall from power - and France being what she has been of late, that is likely sooner rather than later - their successors will not want to risk tarnishing the country's reputation by targeting you or your employers, sir.”

“Thank you”, the valet beamed, picking up his brief-case. “You have saved not only my life but quite certainly those of the people I both love and work for.”

“It has been a pleasure”, Sherlock smiled. Our visitor turned to me.

“Doctor, would you please walk me downstairs?”

I was a little surprised but I agreed and escorted him out of the door. Outside I called a cab for him and one quickly rolled up. He got in but did not call out his destination at once.

“Doctor”, he said carefully, “remember how I said that sometimes I was unable to give warnings of impending disaster?”

“Yes”, I said uncertainly.

“Three things”, he said quietly. “First, I left a small something for you upstairs. Second, remember that Lincoln may not be the end of the line. And third.....”

His curious eyes seemed almost on fire. I was mesmerized.

“Third, remember this. No matter what things may _appear_ to be, no matter how dark death's vale looks while you are traversing its seemingly endless length, one thing is as sure as the sun rising in the east. That man up there _loves_ you, even if he is holding back because of the many trials that still lie ahead of you both. Come hell or high water, he will _never_ leave you!”

I stepped back in shock.

“Driver, Paddington Station!” he called out.

I was stood here for some time with my mouth open as his cab disappeared down Baker Street. How strange.

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“I wonder what he left us?” I said to Sherlock as I looked around the recently-vacated chair. 

It probably said something arguably unflattering about my limited detective skills that I looked for some time before thinking to feel down the side of the seat from where I extracted a battered copy of 'Nicholas Nickleby'. It had one of those spine-attached silk bookmarks inserted just after the start and I opened at the marked page.

“He has underlined a single sentence”, I said. “The pain of parting is nothing to the joy of meeting again.'”

I wished a moment too late that I had continued to stare in puzzlement at the great author's work, but instead I looked across at my friend. He masked his feelings quickly but not quickly enough; the look on his face was unmistakeable. 

_Guilt._

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On the following morning's tide just after nine o' clock in the morning, Mr. Shea Henderson left these shores on board the liner 'Teutonic'. Less than one hour later a pawnbroker called Mr. Edward Fitzroy was shot dead in his shop not far from Baker Street. That shooting began a chain of events which would end in myself and Sherlock following Mr. Henderson across the Great Water, and in my losing the man who I loved more than life itself.

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_Notes:_   
_† The Channel Islands are a set of small islands (Jersey is the largest at 45 square miles) just off the French coast. They are a British Crown Dependency and so not part of the United Kingdom, having their own laws for most things. In 1664 the restored King Charles II granted a large swathe of his American possessions to his brother, the future King James II, who gave part of his new lands to one Sir George Carteret in lieu of a debt. As the latter's ancestral home was on Jersey his lands became New Jersey and two of that state's towns today are Carteret and Elizabeth, the latter named for his wife._   
_‡ Founded in 1856 as Lancaster, still the name of the surrounding county, but renamed Lincoln in 1869. Curiously the renaming after the recently slain president was part of a move to encourage a breakaway attempt; the southern parts of Nebraska had felt unrepresented by distant Omaha and were considering departing to join Kansas, and an Omaha senator suggested the name change because he knew that Confederate sympathies were strong in the southern counties so they would not like being ruled from a town called Lincoln. The breakaway failed but the ongoing worldwide depression saw the new capital's population slump from 55,000 to 37,000 in 1900 before recovering. As of 2018 it is 287,000._   
_¶ The 37th state, admitted to the Union in 1867. Since then Colorado had been granted statehood (1876) and a slew of states in the run-up to when this story is set; North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana and Washington (all 1889), plus Idaho and Wyoming (both 1890) making the total then 44._

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	22. Case 181: The Adventure Of The White Daffodils ☼

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1891\. As the fight against the dark forces of Professor Moriarty nears its climax, Sherlock is distracted by a strange case of theft which has affected his friend, Inspector Gregson. A small, seemingly inconsequential matter yet it would lead to something much more serious - Professor Moriarty himself!

_[Narration by Inspector Tobias Gregson]_

I have no time for all that psychic malarkey – my poor Mary was into it and I kept my mouth shut around her, naturally enough - but I always thought that it was just another way of getting money out of the gullible; Lord knows this city has more than its fair share of those! But looking back, it just seemed a bit too much of a coincidence.

Mary died three years back, and things had never been the same since. We had both wanted a large family but after two sons there were three poor bairns who died within days, until Doctor Watson took me aside and told me that any more might endanger my wife's health which was not that good in the first place. She had never been 'right', whatever 'right' is, and after a long illness she was gone. She left me young Toby and Triss to bring up, but thankfully they were sixteen and thirteen when she passed and able to stand on their own two feet a bit.

One of the things we all agreed on was that we wanted to move house, and soon. The boys would soon be setting up with families of their own but none of us wanted to spend years in a place with so many memories of the woman who had held us together as a family. Finding somewhere half-decent took time – too long – but finally we found a decent place in the north of the city, not far from both my current station as well as where my friends Mr. Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson lived, and moved in to Number Sixteen Butts Road. For a few days I was almost happy – until I found out just who one of my neighbours at Number Twenty-Four was. 

_Bloody LeStrade of all people!_

In return for a happy family life with Mary the Good Lord had seen fit to more than balance the books by adding to my work life one Gawain LeStrade, one of the most annoying, rude, insufferable, unbearable oiks ever to walk the earth! I had no time for my so-called noble father and his toff friends all of whom I could have crossed the street to avoid, but LeStrade was the sort of commoner who revelled in being dirt-common and we clashed all the way from police training college (where we graduated on the same day and with the same scores, somehow) then all the way through our careers. He was a few months older than me and we had both made sergeant at the same time, though what they saw in him Lord alone knows! Worst of all, the bastard was not only friends with my Mr. Holmes but would deliberately go round to Baker Street on Mrs. Hudson's baking days even though it was on my round and not his! Oik!

Having ended up in the same street we might have clashed even more had it not been for his wife, Valerie, a wonderful woman who was more than helpful in my getting Toby and Triss to adulthood without strangling the sometimes pestilential pair along the way. She was a large woman (not 'a battleship' as Triss stupidly called her one time, unaware both that she was just coming through the door with a rolling-pin to hand) and somehow I did not dare to argue with LeStrade in her presence. Not because I was afraid of her, naturally.

All right, I was terrified of her. But then so was her oik of a husband!

I knew Valerie from work even before our move – she had a cleaning job at one of my stations - although obviously I did not know where she lived or I would never have moved into the area. It was just my damn luck that a vacancy for inspector fell open days after Mary's passing; I was in no state to go for it and I just knew that LeStrade would get it which was downright annoying, but Mr. Holmes helped by tipping me the wink that a further vacancy would be arising in a couple of months' time (he also got me time off work to sort things out, which was good of him). Valerie also made her oik of a husband speak up for me when the next promotion came round (bet he hated that!) and although that horrible Chief-Inspector Brown tried to stop me by saddling me with the Crooked Man case. Mr. Holmes solved it and let me take the credit. So I was an inspector too now, which Mary would have been proud of.

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This whole strange business started with a single daffodil - and ended with the worst villain in all London Town! You sure get variety in this job!

Although the boys and I agreed to keep memories of poor Mary in our new house to a minimum, one thing that I did want was to have a flower-garden like she had had back in the old house. She had always known every flower by its normal and foreign name; I just knew that the green end fitted into the ground. She had also had one particular favourite, those daffodils that were white rather than yellow. I asked Valerie about them and she suggested that I try Mr. Holmes, as with all the people he had helped there had to have been a gardener among them, surely? It turned out that there was, and I soon had a whole bank of the things outside my study window.

One Saturday in spring I was weeding the garden when I noticed that one of the flowers had been pulled out and taken. I stared at it in puzzlement; why would someone enter my garden and take a single flower? I checked around but there was no sign of any footprints or anything. I sighed and just carried on with my work.

Next day I was out in the garden again, and I instinctively checked the daffodils. Sure enough, another one had been taken. I frowned as I looked down on them, wondering what the world was coming to nowadays.....

“Problems?”

I looked up to see a fellow in his thirties who had stopped by my fence. He looked vaguely like Mr. Holmes, I thought, except he was quite a bit shorter, had ginger rather than black hair and even at this distance I could see his eyes were a weird orange colour rather than that clever gentleman's freakishly blue colour. The weird thought struck me that he might be some sort of alien, but in this town even that might have struggled to make it into the top ten of weirdness.

“I think that someone had stolen one of my flowers”, I said with a sigh. “I planted them in honour of my late wife, so it is very upsetting.”

The fellow looked thoughtfully at me.

“Perhaps another case for Mr. Sherlock Holmes?” he suggested.

I chuckled at that.

“I know the gentleman, but he has more than enough on his plate without having to solve The Case Of The Two Stolen Daffodils!” I snorted. “Although I suppose that I might put it to him just to see Doctor Watson's face!”

“You never know”, he smiled. “In nature, the greatest oak starts from a tiny acorn.”

He nodded to me and went on his way. I looked after him, wondering.

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The next day I checked when I came home from work, and sure enough another bloody daffodil had gone. Thinking that if this went on I might lose the whole lot, I decided to chance my arm and pop round to Baker Street where, by a stroke of great fortune, it was another of Mrs. Hudson's baking days. Doctor Watson rolled his eyes when I entered their rooms but I was more focussed on the delicious-looking coffee cream cake on the table.

“Gregson!” Mr. Holmes smiled, although I noticed how tired he looked. “What an _amazing_ coincidence! You must have narrowly avoided bumping into LeStrade on his way out.”

I had an idea that Doctor Watson may have muttered something along the lines of 'didn't miss the cake, as always', but well-bred as I am I fortunately did not hear him.

“I am right sorry to be bothering you when I know you are so busy”, I said. “I have a small matter of theft from my garden, and as it concerns the flowers that I planted in honour of poor Mary it is a bit more painful than the loss of a single daffodil each day.”

I could see that both men were surprised at that.

“You are sure that it is only one daffodil?” Mr. Holmes asked.

“Positive”, I said. “Mary always liked to plant things in squares – she once said it made things easier for the insects of something like that – so I can easily see when there is a gap. That expert of yours planted sixty-four bulbs all of which came up in an eight by eight pattern, but this morning I was down to sixty-one.”

Mr. Holmes looked at me thoughtfully. I should say at this point that one of the reasons I esteemed him as a human being was that he never took cases for money alone, but always on whether or not they interested him. Had that not been the case I would surely never have mentioned this to him.

“I think that what with this French mess we have on hand, a diversion would be most welcome”, he said. “What times were the flowers taken, do you know?”

“The ones at the weekend disappeared in the small hours of the morning”, I said. “Today's one was when I was at work; I checked them this morning.”

“The solution seems obvious, then.”

I stared at Mr. Holmes. Sometimes I could empathize with poor Doctor Watson when his clever friend got to the solution way before he was even off the starting-line, but this was pushing it.

“You know who the thief is?” I asked.

“Not yet”, he said, “but I know a way to find out. I will need to do some research and to call in dear Miss St. Leger, but I think that by tomorrow we shall be able to identify the villain.”

I stared at him in astonishment.

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I had read all Mr. Holmes's adventures and knew that he sometimes pulled off what seemed impossible, but even I had my doubts about this one. The following day I received a telegram from him at work saying that he needed some more information on the thief and that he would have to concentrate on his French case which was coming to a sudden conclusion, but if I called round any time the following morning he would be able to enlighten me. I checked the flowers that evening but the mystery thief had not struck again.

When I reached Baker Street the following morning there was a cab waiting outside 221B, and as I approached two gentleman came out. Doctor Watson I recognized of course, but I was surprised at the second gentleman – he was the very same fellow who had talked to me over my fence and encouraged me to go to Mr. Holmes! The fellow talked briefly with Doctor Watson then got into the cab and was driven away; I noted that the doctor seemed slow to go back into the house for some reason so decided to grab a quick bite to eat at a nearby stall before following him in.

Mr. Holmes duly greeted me (the doctor had just been called out, apparently) and I could tell at once that something was wrong. He looked visibly uneasy. What had happened?

“Is it something to do with that fellow who just left?” I asked. “Because I saw him the other day. He was the one who encouraged me to approach you, sir.”

You do not last long as a policeman without sensing when something is off. Mr. Holmes's eyes widened very briefly before he answered, and I knew instinctively that he was about to hide or at least not tell me something.

“A Mr. Shea Henderson, who has been instrumental on helping us sort out the French case”, he said. “What was he doing in your neck of the woods, Gregson? It is nowhere near the way back to his hotel.”

“No idea, sir”, I said. “Our road does not really go anywhere.”

“Actually it does”, Holmes smiled. “Shall we go and meet this 'villain' of yours?”

“Of course, sir”, I said, still wondering what the hell had happened here.

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However, it seemed that even the great Mr. Sherlock Holmes was wont to have his plans set aside on occasion. We went to the small row of shops in Archery Street, which bordered my own, and as we approached a pawn shop I recognized the familiar and unwelcome form of LeStrade. Perhaps he had.... no, the fellow had even less gardening knowledge than me according to Valerie. In fact he was banned from it except when under her direct supervision.

“Has something happened?” Holmes asked.

LeStrade frowned at me (either that or with his bulk he had the wind again) and nodded.

“Mr. Edward Fitzroy was shot dead this morning”, he said. “We caught the villain who did it. Foreigner, name of Mr. Jeremy Pieterson.”

“LeStrade”, Mr. Holmes asked urgently, “where is Mr. _Edmund_ Fitzroy?”

The oik looked confused at actually having to answer a question, but he got there in the end. I did not quite have the time to pull out my watch and check it, worse luck.

“He should be here, sir”, he said, “but there's no sign of him.”

Mr. Holmes thought for a moment.

“LeStrade”, he said slowly, “do you have Mr. Pieterson?”

“Being put in the van over there”, LeStrade said, gesturing to where a scruffy handcuffed fellow was being manhandled into a van. “Why?”

At that exact moment a shot rang out, and Mr. Pieterson fell to the ground. There was chaos but, I noted, Mr. Holmes did not seem in the least bit surprised.

“Because Mr. Pieterson was one of Professor Moriarty's men”, he said calmly, “and you have just let him get shot dead.”

_Oops!_

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We returned in a sombre mood to Baker Street; I was so worried that I almost forgot to ask Mrs. Hudson if there just happened to be a spare slice of that cake available. She nodded then looked at Mr. Holmes.

“You have a visitor, sir”, she said. “A young man, shaking so much he could hardly stand up. As the doctor is back I took the liberty of allowing him to go up.”

Mr. Holmes smiled.

“Thank you, Mrs. Hudson.”

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I have seen many a sight in my time but the one in Mr. Holmes's and Doctor Watson's room when we went up – I do not think that I have ever seen a fellow man in such a state. The doctor had done his best but this fellow was a complete wreck.

“Mr. Fitzroy.”

Mr. Holmes seemed unfazed by the fellow who could not have been more than sixteen years of age. Then again, in his line of work he probably saw much worse.

“Mr. Holmes!” the fellow said. “Save me!”

“Let us sort one thing at a time, please”, Mr. Holmes said. “The daffodils?”

The fellow turned bright red, and looked piteously at me.

“My mother died last week”, he said, “and she only had a pauper's grave. I told her that I would bring her three of those white daffodils she liked, and yours was the only garden in the street that grew them. Sorry, sir.”

Despite the fact that this villain had stolen from me, I could not but feel pity for him. I too knew what it was like to lose a loved one.

“You should have approached me”, I said gently. “I would not have begrudged you three flowers for your own mother. If you want any in the future, ask first.”

He looked at me incredulously, clearly disbelieving that he was not going to suffer some penalty for his crime.

“Now to the rather more serious matter”, Mr. Holmes said. “I am afraid to tell you, Mr. Fitzroy, that Mr. Pieterson is dead. Shot by his employer to prevent him from talking.”

The young man shuddered.

“I told my father not to have any dealings with that villain Moriarty!” he moaned. “But he wanted all that money. Much good is it doing him now!”

There was a rather long silence. I looked curiously at Mr. Holmes.

“Mr. Fitzroy”, he said at last, “did you actually _see_ Mr. Pieterson kill your father?”

The broken man nodded dully but said nothing.

“Let us not mince words”, Mr. Holmes said. “Professor Moriarty has men out all over London looking for you; as you have seen with Mr. Pieterson he believes that dead men tell no tales. If you leave here on your own, I doubt you will see the sun set tonight. But if you are prepared to testify as to what you saw, the links between Mr. Moriarty and Mr. Pieterson are strong indeed. This will be what we need to bring him down.”

“If he does not bring me down first!” the young man muttered.

“He may”, Mr. Holmes said. “Or he may try other means to secure his ends. I have a plan.....

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I left Mr. Holmes's house feeling a bit more hopeful. It seemed that my little case might, by one of those freakish coincidences, be just what the fellow needed in his present difficulties, which was....

There was a cough from behind me and I froze in the doorway.

“Yes, ma'am?” I said politely to Mrs. Hudson (she had a pistol and she baked cake, two excellent reasons to practice good manners).

She looked pointedly at me. For a moment I was confused by then it hit me - ye Gods, I had almost forgotten the cake!

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	23. Interlude: Royal Ruminations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1891\. A Queen is Concerned.

_[Narration by Mrs. Margaret Ball]_

London. That unholy mess of humanity and inhumanity, four million souls crammed into one place fighting the good fight that is the daily struggle for existence. And like all cities London needs governance. 

At _all_ levels.

Despite the warm regard that I have for the gentleman, I have to say that the advent of Mr. Sherlock Holmes made my own position that much more difficult. As Queen of the Mendicants a key part of my success lay in my many subjects knowing and trusting that I had absolutely no political allegiances, and that while there might have been some foolish people who thought to attack my subjects, a swift retaliatory blow always sufficed to drive home to them that such actions were Not Acceptable. Maintaining this policy had been relatively easy – until as I said the advent of Mr. Sherlock Holmes.

I do not know what it was about the man but there was just _something_ about him. I had of course long ago amassed a file on the gentleman – one does not remain in any position of power in our city without being aware of even the smallest potential source of friction – and I remember that I had laughed with dear Lord Joseph over the frequent reports that nearly every female of the species that this Mr. Holmes came across ended up simpering at him. The foolishness of some people!

That was until I met the gentleman himself. My encounters with him were always extremely difficult; there was just something about him that had my face defaulting to where it tried to simper at him without my brain's permission. And he was so utterly ado.... charming to boot. It was _annoying!_

I was fortunate therefore that he was able to assist me in the matter of my niece's inheritance which enabled me to let my subjects know I was formally Pleased with him. That, coupled with his deadly enemy Professor Moriarty's recent foolishness in crossing me, meant that mendicants across the capital knew that this one time it was more than acceptable to take sides. As for his inveigling poor Tillie (whom Mr. Holmes generously paid to join some cousins of hers up in Scotland, where I hear she is doing very well) into his evil designs – that only increased his offence to my being Gravely Displeased with him. The Professor doubtless believed that he was being just incredibly unlucky for some reason, but luck is what you make it as my dear late mother always said. He has made his all bad.

I was particularly proud of one of my subjects who by dint of some well-targetted eavesdropping in the Temple was able to pass on to me certain information about a High Personage who was behaving Not As They Ought and worse, in such a way as to endanger my dear little darl.... ahem, I mean Mr. Holmes. I immediately passed the information onto him and unusually – for I am not deeply religious – that night I prayed fervently.

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	24. Case 182: The Adventure Of The Warrenders

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1891\. A quiet spinster finds herself draw into the battle against Professor Moriarty and shows true courage - before very wisely getting the hell out of Dodge!

**Stephenville, Dominion of Newfoundland**

**1912**

_[Narration by Miss Millicent Warrender]_

'I must say how startled I was when dear Doctor Watson communicated with me via the electronic telegraph across the wide Atlantic Ocean – is it not remarkable what technology can achieve these days? - and requested that I, little Minnie Warrender, write the story of how I was dragged into one of the most important cases ever undertaken by his friend, dear Mr. Sherlock Holmes. I only met the latter on one occasion but remember him so clearly, especially given what ensued so soon afterwards with the great man's 'death'. Fortunately all came right in the end but I was still shocked when Doctor Watson suggested that I write this tale from my own humble point of view. He was however quite insistent, and with the promise that my humble efforts would not see the light of day until I and my dear sisters had all passed and that certain details would be changed, I eventually concurred.

I was born in the year that the hated Corn Laws were repealed, eighteen hundred and forty-eight, the fourth child of Captain John-James Warrender of the Household Cavalry and Mrs. Warrender, née Miss Ursula Crawley. My mother had a fascination with the name 'Millicent' for some reason – I have no idea where from as no relation that I can find ever bore it - and she bestowed it on all three of we her daughters, our sole brother being named Beaufort as that had been the surname of our maternal grandmother. My sisters were Millicent Patricia ('Patty') and Millicent Stephanie ('Missy'), Patrick, Stephen and Nigel being three of my father's brothers. Beaufort, some ten years older than myself, had studied to be a lawyer and had risen rapidly in his profession, becoming a judge some six years before the events that I am about to describe; he unlike my sisters did feature rather too prominently in the adventure that was about to befall me.

Looking back on those times I suppose that I was the archetypal Victorian old maid. I had not been blessed with the good looks of my sisters but I was not jealous when they married well and had children, as I enjoyed visiting my nephews and nieces (and if truth be told, enjoyed even more being able to leave them behind at the end of the day when I went back to my own small yet wonderfully quiet house!). 

I was also fortunate as regarded financial matters in that although my parents had both passed in the late seventies, they had left me exceptionally well provided for. My brother had never maintained a good relationship with them and had made a most unhappy and short-lived marriage which had further deepened the familial rift. He had also crossed our parents by undertaking the defence of a most unpleasant villain who had stolen from one of my father's army colleagues whom he valued most highly. My sisters had both married wealthy gentlemen hence most of the family wealth came to me, as a result of which I was able to purchase a small house in St. John's Wood and to live there quite contentedly. 

I could have managed comfortably enough on this money but I quite enjoyed supplementing my income by cleaning for two young lawyers who shared a room in nearby Marylebone. It was this circumstance that led to me acquiring rather more excitement than I could ever have wished for and, ultimately, my crossing the wide blue Atlantic Ocean to my current home in Newfoundland. I had never been Abroad before this sudden and monumental change in my circumstances and can only say that I am fortunate to have found somewhere so like England and yet with its own unique character. Even the rain seems familiar!

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I am not the slightest bit intelligent but I had observed during my short 'career' that cleaning-ladies seemed to acquire a degree of invisibility among those who employ them. The two young men for whom I cleaned would often discuss cases that they were involved in while I was finishing my tasks, seemingly uncaring that I might hear them. Of course I would _never_ have revealed any of what they said, yet it was one such instance of unwanted eavesdropping which led me into my Great Adventure. I cannot reveal the names of these gentlemen for reasons that will become clear later in my tale so I shall take dear Doctor Watson's advice and use the aliases 'Jack' and 'Joseph'.

On this particular day I arrived to find the gentlemen's main room in rather more of a mess than usual. There was an apologetic note from them both, stating that they had hosted a friend's birthday party the night before, plus a promise to pay me double for that particular day. They were always fair and honourable like that which, given from what little I knew about the legal profession, was an all too rare trait.

The gentlemen arrived back just as I was finishing off and again apologized for the mess; indeed Jack insisted on my taking home a large parcel of leftovers from the party which was kind of him. I was assembling this parcel in their kitchen when I again chanced to overhear them talking. As I said before I would never normally have eavesdropped, but the fact that it was my own surname mentioned in the first sentence – I felt that that gave me some entitlement even if it was not about me personally:

“Old Warrender will _never_ agree to that!” Jack said scornfully. “He is all about 'justice being done and being seen to be done'. He will refuse point blank to accept evidence in private.”

I pricked up my ears. Yes I felt guilty, but then the gentlemen knew me as 'Mrs. Fulmer”, I having decided to use Missy's married name to avoid my lowly status being tied to that of our lofty brother. The young gentlemen could not know that I was in fact the sister of the very person that they were talking about, Judge Beaufort Warrender.

”There is more to this case than meets the eye, Jackie”, Joseph replied, “you mark my words. A small-time North London pawnbroker gets done in yet it comes up before one of the highest beaks in the Three Kingdoms? Pull the other one!”

“Justice for all, Joe”, Jack countered.

“All who can afford it”, Joseph replied. “That unpleasant toadie Cooper is defending the accused chappie and he is whining like billy-ho that he has not been allowed access to the main witness.”

“Cooper whining is like the sky being blue!” Jack snorted. “And they cannot deny him that, surely? It is a legal right.”

“Sally at the office says that the witness is in a safe-house somewhere”, Joseph said. “Someone wants him silenced for good, and we all know that only ever happens in the really big cases. Still, I doubt Old Windy will accept that.”

I frowned. I knew by this time that my brother's nickname was because of the scale for measuring wind – Patty's eldest son John wanted to be a scientist and had told me all about it – and not because of his unfortunate and oftentimes violent reaction to certain pulse foods. Besides, my brother always got very cross when anyone raised the subject.

”This comes from higher up”, Jack said confidently. “He will have no choice.”

I very much doubted that. My brother could be downright truculent when it came to such matters; my sisters were quite right when they said the best way to get him to do something was to tell him that he absolutely must not do it!

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For some reason the words of my young gentlemen stuck in my mind, and that weekend I took myself down to the local library to see if I could find out anything about the case that they had been talking about. I could not of course ask anyone for help – they would have thought my interest in such a matter very strange if not quite inappropriate – but after some searching I found the story that my employers must have been talking about. The pawnbroker had been a gentleman called Mr. Edward Fitzroy and the newspaper speculated in a short article that the murder was most likely related to his business, possibly a disgruntled customer. His son Edmund was either responsible for the crime or knew who was and was thought to be in hiding somewhere.

What I found curious was that the 'Times' seemed to lose all interest in the crime after the initial report. The next two days had nothing on it at all, not even in the 'Ongoing Stories' section inside. This story had disappeared after just one day, unlike two others from the same day of the first article. I felt uneasy for some reason and I knew not why.

While I was in the library I took advantage of their magazine section to enjoy the latest edition of the 'Strand' magazine. Mostly fluff and bubble between its bright covers but I always enjoyed the humanity of both the Aunt Aneira letters page, and the adventures of Mr. Sherlock Holmes and his good friend Doctor John Watson. Some of the cases that the latter gentlemen solved together were incredible considering what little information they so often started with. I felt sure that they would be able to solve the Adventure Of The Oddly Disinterested Newspaper Reporters with ease.

I little knew then that they would do just that. With, incredibly, my help!

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I would not of course have even _thought_ about approaching the great Mr. Holmes on so trivial a matter as this had thus far been, had not events taken a worrisome turn the very next day. I returned home from the gentlemen's rooms to find that I had an unexpected visitor, my sister Patty. She was quite distrait and it took me some time (and her a large sherry) to get her to come to the point.

“Your dear neighbour Mrs. Lucas let me in”, she explained. “A good thing too, for she told me something _most_ upsetting. Sister, we are being _watched!”_

I was more than a little sceptical. Patty was a good person and did much work for her local charities, but she was more than a little inclined to be gullible. Much like the Pope was more than a little inclined to be Catholic. I braced myself.

“Watched by whom, pray?” I asked.

“I do not know”, she admitted, “but a strange woman went to my neighbour in Camberwell and asked all about my family and.... and about dear Beau. Then when I came here Mrs. Lucas said that a woman had been round asking exactly the same questions about him..... _and you!”_

I began to feel uneasy again and not just because Mrs. Lucas (a ghastly, opinionated woman who could talk without any apparent need to draw breath) would doubtless be on about this to me later. I made a mental note to try to avoid her.

“What shall we _do?”_ Patty wailed. “It could be those dreadful white slave-traders!”

“I rather doubt that”, I said suppressing a smile (my sister had a thing about white slave-traders). “Let us be sensible, dear sister. When I come back from work on Monday I shall call in on Missy and ask her whether she has experienced anything similar. If not, then it will just be a coincidence.”

“What about Beau?” she asked. 

I sighed, and levelled her with a look.

“Can you imagine what Beau would say if we approached _him_ on this?” I asked, trying to keep a sharp tone from my voice. “We would just be a bunch of silly women who do not know what they are talking about. No, we shall check with Missy, then if the need arises I have someone upon whom I can call for help.”

 _If I am brave enough_ , I added silently.

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Sunday passed uneventfully although I may have offered up some extra prayers in church (in case you are wondering, Missy devoted her whole day of rest to church business and her family knew full well not to bother her then). Hence it was Monday that I called on my (marginally) more sensible sibling who had not noticed anything out of the ordinary. But on checking with her neighbours we did indeed discover that both of them had been asked about her and our brother. 

It was time for action!

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My first and only encounter with Mr. Sherlock Holmes – only later did I come to understand the reasons for his strained appearance and why I saw so little of him – did not go that well. I approached 221B Baker Street feeling ever more nervous until I came to a full stop, most probably to the annoyance of those others using the pavement. I stared up at the handsome Georgian building and tried to tell myself that I would not be laughed at, that it was possible the great detective might.....

“I do not bite, madam.”

Too late did my overwrought brain piece together what those words meant. I only realized that there was a Man standing directly behind me on the pavement, and I swung round and screamed at him. 

It was, of course, Mr. Sherlock Holmes. _I wanted to die!_

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The ground having most cruelly and unfairly failed to open up beneath me, I allowed the gentleman to guide me in to the house and up to his rooms. Mr. Sherlock Holmes was a difficult man to describe; he was very much like his pictures in the magazine but his dominant feature was his eyes which I can only describe as almost preternaturally blue. I can honestly say that neither before or since I have never considered a man truly beautiful (as opposed to handsome), but he shone with an honesty and rectitude that was breathtaking. Thank the Lord that I did not do what I know from his stories so many ladies did in his presence, and start simpering at him.

It was a _polite smile!_

Also in the room was his famous colleague Doctor John Watson who I knew documented their adventures together. He was an inch or two shorter than the detective but more solidly built, and had a no-nonsense air about him. I noted the way that he took the opportunity of his friend settling my nerves to re-arrange the blankets on the fireside chair into which the detective subsequently sat, and that he looked anxiously at him the whole time that I was there. I thought that he rolled his eyes at me when I smiled politely at Mr. Holmes, but I could not be sure.

“Now”, Mr. Holmes said with a smile, “I believe that you came here to seek my help today, madam? May we please know your name?”

Using at least twice as many words as was necessary I managed to explain the recent events that had disconcerted me. Mr. Holmes did not react when I said my name but I observed that the doctor, taking notes at the table, paused in his writing and looked across at me. When I had finished, Mr. Holmes pressed his long fingers together and thought for a few moments.

“I would like to begin by asking you a rather strange question if I may, Miss Warrender”, he said. “How attached are you to _England?”_

That was indeed a strange question and I had to think a little before answering. I was of course very patriotic and loved my country, but I would had to admit that the fast-rising population of the city made me yearn more and more for some small country retreat. Mr. Holmes nodded at my answer then hesitated.

“Miss Warrender”, he said gravely, “you are evidently a lady of strong character and I am compelled to be frank with you. I am involved with a case at this moment of great import and I fear that your brother may be involved.”

“But Beau is a judge!” I objected.

“I did not say as a criminal”, he said (had I been sharper I might have spotted his slight evasion there). “However someone has clearly made inquiries into your family, and may I say that it was most observant of you all to spot it and that you were quite correct to lay this matter before me. Miss Warrender, I must be blunt. The danger that surrounds your brother now threatens to engulf you and your sisters, and possibly even their families.”

“What can be done?” I asked trying not to show my fear. He hesitated again.

“Madam, have you courage?” he asked. “Courage to undertake a task that will involve following certain instructions, and then doing exactly as I say thereafter?”

“Well...”

“I cannot however allow you to undertake this task without first apprising you of the dangers”, he said. “If what I am planning is successful then you will need to quit England for a while; indeed you may never get to return. But you could have your choice of anywhere in the world and I would of course manage all your finances so that money would never be a problem.”

I stared at him aghast, before pulling myself together.

“I suppose that there is my nephew, Andrew” I said. “Patty's second son. He married a lady from Newfoundland, the island off Canada, and went to live there at the start of last year. He has written to me of the place and he made it sound just like home.”

“Then that is where you should go”, Mr. Holmes smiled. “Once you have done what I ask, you must go home and pack two large bags of everything that you wish to take with you and have them ready for an immediate departure when the time comes. I can deal with the sale of the house for you and all that, so do no worry over such trivialities.”

I took a deep breath. My day was not turning out quite how I had expected.

“What would you have me do?” I asked.

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I had not expected anything daring or dangerous in Mr. Holmes's request, but the sheer mundaneness of it struck me as faintly comical. I was to acquire a cake and, on a certain day, pay a visit to my brother and spend some little time talking with him. 

That was it.

Beau was surprised to see me but fortunately as I had amended Mr. Holmes's plan slightly to bring him four of his favourite jam doughnuts he was pleased enough. Of course we did not discuss any of his cases – I am sure that they would have been far above my head anyway, let alone the gruesome details that might have emerged – and I left him feeling that whatever Mr. Holmes had meant to achieve by my visit then at least I had played my part.

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Apparently I had, for just two days later I had an unexpected visitor just after breakfast. It was Doctor Watson.

“Madam”, he said urgently, “the time for action has come. A ship is leaving Plymouth for Boston this evening, and it is imperative that you be on it!”

“How will I get there?” I asked. He produced a large envelope.

“The cab outside is waiting take us to Paddington Station”, he said, “where you will catch the half-past nine train. Mr. Holmes has reserved a first-class seat in a ladies' compartment for you; you will have about three hours when you get to Plymouth before the ship sails. A first-class berth will be yours and you will spend a night in Boston at a quality hotel before boarding a second ship that calls in at St. John's, where we have arranged for your nephew to meet you and take you to the house that we have purchased for you. We need to act _now.”_

“But what about my brother and sisters?” I fretted. He picked up the two bags that I had as instructed had ready by the door.

“Is there anything else that you need?” he asked.

“Well, no....”

“Then let us depart.”

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Unfortunately conversation in the cab proved impossible; indeed I have never been on so terrifying a ride in my life as the driver seemed determined to make his destination in record time. Doctor Watson apologized once we finally (and thankfully!) arrived at Paddington in one piece but said that our catching the train was of great import. We made the station with over twenty minutes to spare so he accompanied me onto the train, settled my things in a most luxurious carriage – I had never travelled first-class before in my life! - then took me to the dining-car. Over a fortifying cup of tea he proceeded to explain matters to me, and he started with a most shocking piece of news.

“I am sorry to have to tell you”, he began, “that your brother is dead.”

I stared at him in amazement.

“But how? I demanded. “I saw him only the other day.”

He took a deep breath.

“My friend deals with all aspects of the criminal world”, he said. “For the past few years he has been aware of efforts by one man in particular, a Professor James Moriarty, to gain control of that world.”

I had read that name in the paper one time.

“Did not the 'Times' call him a doctor?” I asked.

“He trained as such Abroad”, he said, “where the requirements to acquire that title are considerably lower. We have frustrated his ambitions on a number of occasions and recently we finally had a chance to make a move against the man himself. The case that you overheard your gentlemen lawyers talking about, the killing of the East End pawnbroker Mr. Fitzroy. That was carried out by one of Professor Moriarty's henchmen.”

I shuddered again. What sort of world had I stumbled in to?

“The killer Mr. Pieterson was captured but Professor Moriarty had him assassinated”, he said, talking as if murder on the streets of London was in some way perfectly normal. “However, Mr. Fitzroy's killing was witnessed by his teenage son Edmund, and he became the only proof of the link between the Professor and Mr. Pieterson. The Professor wished to remove that link. Permanently.”

“But where does poor Beau fit into all this?” I asked. 

He reddened, and I had a bad feeling that I knew what was coming. I was right.

“Money will buy many men”, he said sadly, “and unable as he was to get directly at young Mr. Fitzroy, Professor Moriarty was able to buy your brother's complicity once he knew that he would be the judge at any trial. Mr. Holmes foresaw that he might try such a thing and arranged matters such that your brother was, after asking for it several times, provided this morning with the address of the safe-house where the witnesses were being kept. He was also told that they were set to be moved elsewhere that same morning. Unable to contact his paymaster quickly enough he took his own gun and went round there, meaning to eliminate them. He was shot dead when he shot at the policemen defending them.”

I stared at him in shock.

“What about me?” I asked in a small voice. 

He looked pointedly at me.

“As Mr. Pieterson found out all too well”, he said, “Professor Moriarty works on the rule that any connection to him, no matter how remote, _must_ be eliminated. When my friend made his interest in this case evident, the Professor naturally reasoned that someone had talked so set about checking out your family, which you and your sisters very cleverly detected. Your visit to your brother the other day and the fact that you spent some time talking was to lead him to the conclusion that _you_ were the person who had talked.”

I was shocked!

“I could have been killed!” I said angrily. He shook his head.

“Miss Warrender”, he said slowly, “three of the very best private armed security guards have been stationed around you and your house since that visit. Your lawyer gentlemen were pulled onto a case that involved their sudden travel to Norwich which is why they did not require your services, and more importantly that you did not need to leave the house. That is why we are sending you abroad.”

“What if they hunt me down?” I asked.

“You will see that the name on the tickets is 'Mrs. Ffarquhar”, he said, “and the envelope here has all the documentation you will need. One of my friend's agents is undertaking a journey from London disguised as you and heading to the house of your nephew William who lives in the south of Italy. The records will subsequently show that 'you' were killed in some sort of accident.”

I had to admire his thoroughness. I looked out at the busy, bustling masterpiece of Mr. Isambard Kingdom Brunel and thought wryly that I was about to leave England never to return. To think that I had once wished for more excitement in my humdrum life!

They were so right about being careful what you wished for!

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There is little more to be said. I had a most pleasant journey – first-class all the way! – and eventually reached my wonderful new cottage which was less than fifteen minutes' walk from my nephew's house and perfect for me. There I have lived ever since. Stephenville is a lovely small town on the western coast of the island, sheltered and peaceful, and I have been very happy here.

I subsequently read the dramatic story of how poor Mr. Holmes plunged to his death with that vile Professor Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland. Only three years later did I learn that it had all been a ruse and that the great man was alive and well, still with his friend (I received a telegram from Doctor Watson immediately on his return which was kind of him given what he himself must have gone through). He offered me the opportunity to return to England if I so wished but I am happy here so I declined, although he did arrange some trips to see my sisters and their families which I greatly enjoyed. It was as I said the doctor who asked me if I might write my own small part in the story of he and his friend and I have fulfilled that duty.'

M.N.W.

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	25. Case 183: The Final Problem

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1891\. John loses his Sherlock - or so he thinks.

_[Narration by Doctor John Watson, M.D.]_

My friend had, I knew, been extremely fortunate in that his seemingly trivial investigation into the theft of daffodils from our friend Inspector Gregson's house had led him to encounter Mr. Edmund Fitzroy, whose evidence – if we could keep him alive – would certainly bring down the vile Professor Moriarty, That villain tried everything to slow or stop the wheels of justice grinding against him but thanks to the actions of heroic figures like Miss Millicent Warrender they continued, and by mid-February I had almost begun to feel hopeful that we might come through this ordeal.

St. Valentine's Day that year fell on a Saturday so I did not expect to have to work, but early that morning a telegram arrived from one of the surgery's newer (and richest) clients requesting my urgent attendance – no clue as to why, annoyingly – so I packed the bag that Sherlock had given me and set off. I remember that, unusually, he had not emerged from his room by the time I left, even though it was after ten o' clock. I silently cursed this 'Mrs. Jackson' and promised myself that I would charge her up to the maximum if this proved to be a wasted journey. 

I arrived to the address I had been given which was in Manchester Square, not far from both Dorset Street and Cramer Street. It was an almost palatial residence, and I was immediately shown up to the room by a footman who withdrew rather than enter with me. Unannounced and thinking to myself that standards were definitely slipping these days, I stepped forward to meet Mrs. Jackson – and froze.

'Mrs. Jackson' was none other than Mr. Lucifer Garrick!

“Huh?” I said eloquently. He rose to his feet.

“Doctor”, he said urgently, “if you value the lives of both your good self and my cousin, you will do _exactly_ as I tell you. Both of your lives will likely depend on your actions in the coming hours.”

Something about the tone of his voice told me that he was deadly serious, and I nodded. He held out his hand then led me out of the room and down the back stairs to a rear exit where a carriage was waiting. He physically manhandled me into it before barking 'Paddington Station' at the driver, who then set off so fast that I almost fell to the floor. My second manic ride to Brunel's terminus in a short time, I thought, as I struggled to regain my balance, except that this time it was seemingly my turn to flee.

“You have been watched ever since you left Baker Street”, Mr. Garrick said ominously. “We have at best fifteen minutes before they realize they have been duped but God willing, that should be enough.”

I was beginning to resent being pushed around like this, but I felt a rising sense of fear at the chain of events that was unfolding. We pulled up sharply at the station entrance, and I was again manhandled out and through to the platform, where the Plymouth Express was just about to leave. Mr. Garrick hesitated, then pulled open a door to a first-class compartment, threw my bag inside, and all but forced me in. The only other occupant of the compartment was a gentleman reading a newspaper, who surprisingly did not react to my undignified entrance. That was until he slowly lowered the paper and turned a pair of familiar blue eyes on me.

“Hullo, John.”

Sherlock!

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“Hullo?” I almost yelled. “Hullo?”

I was apparently turning into a parrot. Sherlock smiled apologetically at me.

“I am sorry for all the subterfuge”, he said, “but it was necessary for the continued existence of both of us. I rather prefer being alive, and were those monitoring us able to become aware of our plans I believe that they have been ordered to shoot first and ask questions not at all.”

The guard's whistle blew, and the sudden jerk of the carriage almost threw me into him. Overbalancing, I collapsed untidily back into the seat opposite, from which I gaped at him.

“An explanation?” I said weakly. “Please?”

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“As you know”, he said, “the Fitzroy Case has proven to be the golden thread that is unravelling Professor Moriarty's evil empire. Despite the best – or worst – machinations of his highly-paid legal team, the case has been hustled through the courts with impressive speed thanks in large part to the work of our friend Miss St. Leger. One of my opponent's few weaknesses is a rampant misogyny, in that he believes that no woman could ever outwit him. A weakness that she has most brilliantly exploited.”

“Miss St. Leger has been hard at work”, he went on. “Not only in 'persuading' certain wheels of our legal system to grind rather faster that they would otherwise – her files on the peccadilloes of that profession are worryingly copious and as I myself found, oftentimes best not read on a full stomach! – but also to tighten the net around Professor Moriarty. In the past week four witnesses to crimes committed by the doctor's men have come to London police-stations, and the case against him is now ironclad. The only thing keeping his out of the law's clutches right now is the delaying efforts of his own lawyers, and even for them time is fast running out.”

“So he turns on you”, I sighed.

“I have been keeping the various witnesses safe”, he said. “Even though we frustrated the Professor's attempts to plant 'obliging' policemen in the East End, as we saw with Judge Warrender even enforcers of the law can be bought off by someone who will pay a high enough price. But now he has no more cards to play save one.”

I had a bad feeling that I knew what that last card was.

“Indeed”, he said. “My rival has already been round to Baker Street and threatened revenge for my actions. He said at one point that he would target you, your brother and his family.”

My heart ran cold.

“However”, he said, “I made it clear that two could play at that game. Moriarty has a family of his own, and I countered that any actions against any Watson would result in his own dear wife and children meeting some very unfortunate and painful accidents within hours of such a happening. We could target each other by all means, but not those close to us.”

I felt a warm feeling at that.

“But then why did he send his men after me?” I asked. 

Sherlock chuckled.

“Doctor”, he said, “my opponent knows that I would never flee from him and leave you behind. How could I?”

If there was life on the Moon, I was sure that even they would have been able to see my blush.

“I knew that he was planning a move against me”, Sherlock went on. “Miss St. Leger managed to deflect his efforts into attempting to obtain the employment of an unlicensed assassin, one Mr. Coborn. As you may imagine our friend Mr. Bow was not pleased when she informed him of what was afoot; he had already warned Mr. Coborn that his earlier actions had resulted in his needing an immediate trip abroad again, for his health.”

 _For his survival_ , I translated. Sherlock nodded.

“Mr. Bow then warned Mr. Swordland – Miss St. Leger, of course – that the professor would likely look elsewhere abroad for someone to try to kill me”, he went on. “She has fewer contacts there but luckily Mr. Marcus Crowley has some in Paris. As we both know he loathes and fears Professor Moriarty, and he informed me that my enemy had just employed one of France's leading assassins, a Monsieur Giscard, to come to England and kill me.”

I stared at him in horror.

“Miss St. Leger warned him not to”, Sherlock said. “When he decided to cross the Channel, she ensured that he ended up under it. We are safe - for now.”

I swallowed hard. Today was moving much too fast for my liking.

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“We are making good time”, I said as we rattled across the Berkshire countryside. “He cannot catch us now, surely?”

Sherlock shook his head.

“Luke's subterfuge may have shaken them off but they will quickly work out that we are on the Plymouth Express to connect with the sailing of the 'Iberia'”, he said. “He will follow us.”

“He cannot overtake us”, I said. “Not an express.”

“He will hire a special”, Sherlock said. “Most probably from the London & South Western at Waterloo. If he is quick he may even beat this train to Exeter; he would certainly reach Plymouth before us.”

I looked at him in alarm.

“Calm yourself, doctor”, he said. “We are not going that far. We shall alight at Temple Meads Station in Bristol, take our own special from the Midland Railway Company that Luke has arranged for us, and be in Liverpool in time to catch the 'Majestic'. She is the only ship that does not call at an Irish port so even if he hires a motor-yacht he cannot intercept us.”

“Why Luke?” I asked, curiously.

“We met some time back and it was decided that both Randall and Guilford would be closely watched by Moriarty's men”, Sherlock explained. “Their involvement in government affairs is fairly well-known, but Luke is far more covert. The newspapers consider him the rebel in the family and he is known not to like either of the pestilential pair.”

I sighed. My life was suddenly rather too interesting. But at least I still had my man.

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What seemed like an age later we pulled into Temple Meads and barely ten minutes later our own single-coach train was steaming rapidly northwards through Gloucestershire.

“How did you evade them at Baker Street?” I asked. I was feeling happier at the turn of events, especially as there was a picnic hamper with us that contained three of Branksome's double chocolate fudge slices. I would miss those more than most things in England.

“Initially Guilford dressed himself up as me and lurked around the room”, he explained. “Mrs. Hudson smuggled me out of the back, after she had made a public display of sending two bags to Victoria Station to suggest a crossing to the Continent from either Kent or Sussex. Miss St. Leger has an agent going there, to draw off at least some of our pursuers.”

“I hated those blinds that you had put up last month”, I observed. “Ghastly grey things.”

He looked at me pointedly.

“John”, he said slowly, “those are Iron Duke blinds. Designed to deflect gunshots from outside.”

Oh.

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We boarded the 'Majestic' as Mr. Alexander and Mr. Benjamin Frost, brothers returning to Canada from a trip abroad. The passports provided by Sherlock's cousin looked more genuine than my British one, which he had brought along with my bag.

“Do you think that Professor Moriarty will follow us across the Atlantic?” I asked worriedly. He nodded.

“It is certain”, he said calmly. “But not immediately; that is why I chose Plymouth for an initial destination as there are ships from there to the Continent, so he will have to waste time to find out whither we went. The only revenge that he can take now is my life, and he will go through hell and high water to make sure that he does exactly that.”

I shuddered.

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We arrived safely in New York, and checked into a small hotel near the Grand Central Station.

“The first ship that Professor Moriarty can get is the 'Palomar', and she is not due in for another three days”, Sherlock said. “He is, I think, more likely to make sure of things in England and then take the 'Teutonic' which is both faster and more comfortable, and would get him here only twelve hours later. He does prefer his comforts. Unless he decides that England is too risky to wait another twelve hours.”

“We have a few days' head start, then”, I said. “What about the American police?”

Sherlock shook his head.

“Luke said that it would be more efficient to use a private search agency, so he has employed Pinkerton's”, he said. “Unfortunately, until the case officially comes before an English judge they cannot arrest him over here.”

“What if he manages to kill your witnesses?” I asked worriedly.

“Calm yourself, doctor”, he smiled. “Once Judge Jameson hears the case next week, an arrest warrant can be telegraphed across the Atlantic. Moriarty's fate is sealed. It is only a matter of time.”

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On the basis that he would not expect it, we set out next day up the East Coast, calling in at New London (on the Thames!) and spending a night in Boston.

“Luke will be shadowing Moriarty as he crosses”, Sherlock explained. “Randall is creating a Continental diversion, and Guilford will try to meet us later on.”

I thought of Mr. Henderson's quote about meeting again. That suggested a separation first, and I worried about that. I remembered poor old King Croesus and his misinterpretation of that Delphic prophecy†. What if he had meant meeting again in Heaven?

We worked our way up into New Hampshire and Vermont, where we stayed at a charming little bed and breakfast in the town of Burlington. It was close to idyllic if a little cold and I was sorry to move on, but I knew that staying in one place for any length of time would be to invite disaster. We then proceeded across the upper part of New York State until we reached the town of Buffalo, and I got to see the majestic Niagara Falls. Mr. Garrick met us there to update us on matters, and with new passports that 're-christened' us as Mr. Peter Woods and Mr. Kenneth Baker, two Canadian businessmen on holiday in the United States.

It was March by this time and we proceeded along the south coast of Lake Erie until we reached Detroit, which did not impress me much. Neither did Chicago, especially as it was there that we had our first scare. Sherlock's cousin arrived at our hotel at one in the morning and told us that we had been recognized, and that Professor Moriarty was sending two men up from Indianapolis overnight. We had to make a silent departure, slipping out to wait several hours at the cold railroad station before we could take the first train south (Mr. Garrick advised that it would not be expected for us to head towards a potential danger). 

From then on we stopped only one night in each place. We moved south to Chattanooga and Birmingham, and met the Gulf of Mexico when we stopped for a night at Mobile where it was far too hot and humid. Then it was onto Baton Rouge and my first sighting of the mighty Mississippi River, before we turned north and stopped at Little Rock before reaching St. Louis. 

The following day, Mr. Garrick was waiting for us at breakfast with news that despite our efforts we had been found again, and this time Moriarty's agents were in the same tow, or at least just across the river in East St. Louis. We left quickly for the railroad station and were fortunate to catch a train heading west by less than five minutes. 

We spent that night in Kansas City, and I felt exhausted. while I was proud of the British legal system, I wished that they could just find Moriarty guilty, send to the Americans to capture him and spare us all this worry. Sherlock seemed calm to the point of being resigned, which worried me even more.

The following day we started early again, and I expected us to traverse the state of Kansas. But instead we travelled north until we crossed into Nebraska and it was late afternoon when Sherlock indicated that it was time to leave the train. I alighted at a small town station – and my heart sank.

Lincoln. And standing right there by the station sign, a sombre-looking Mr. Shea Henderson, whom we had recently encountered over the Boulanger business. He had said that he was headed out west, but what were the chances of us running into him in such a vast area?

Somehow I just _knew_. This was no chance meeting. This was indeed the end of the line.

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Mr. Henderson took us to his house, a fair-sized place on the edge of town, and showed us our rooms. I could feel myself growing more and more nervous.

“What is going on, Sherlock?” I demanded. 

He sighed.

“John”, he said slowly, “do you trust me?”

“With all my heart”, I said firmly.

“Then I must ask you to believe in me for now”, he said heavily. “Matters have not worked out as I had hoped, but we may still come through this. Please?”

Now that was unfair, pulling out the lost puppy look at that point. Especially as I would have caved anyway. I smiled and pulled him into a hug.

“Always and forever, Sherlock”, I said fervently. “Always and forever.”

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The next morning was the twelfth, a day that I would remember for many years to come. I wok feeling both unaccountably cold and unusually drowsy. Sherlock was not in bed with me, which given that we were in a private house was not unusual, but something at the back of my mind was telling me that that was not the worst of my problems. I dragged myself up and went over to the mirror where I carefully examined my eyes. Just as I suspected. I turned to pull on my dressing-gown to leave the room - and froze.

Sherlock's ring had been placed next to mine on the bedside table. The ring that he had worn ever since we had purchased his and mine back in Verona. A cold terror gripped my heart.

I dressed as quickly as I could, forgoing even the briefest attempt at shaving, and hurried downstairs. Somehow I was not surprised to see Mr. Garrick sat at the breakfast table. He was dressed as a real tourist, right down to the binoculars around his neck. He saw me stumble in, and looked at his watch. As well he might; it was past ten o' clock.

“What did you do?” I almost snarled. I did not care that he was bigger and stronger than me right then; my only thoughts were a growing fear for my Sherlock. 

“I did nothing”, he said levelly, though I noticed that he did seem a little uneasy as he spoke. 

I was not to be so easily deterred.

“All right, what did you get Sherlock to do?” I demanded. “Doctor, remember? I know when someone has drugged me!”

“This was all his idea”, he said, standing up. “If you are ready, perhaps we should go.”

That should have reassured me but I still felt that something was terribly wrong. Why would Sherlock drug my evening cocoa, then leave without saying anything? It did not bode well.

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A cart was outside ready for us, and we set off heading west. It irked me that Mr. Garrick did not seem inclined to rush and kept looking at his watch for some reason, but I gritted my teeth and said nothing. When we reached the edge of town I noticed the entrance to one large single-story building that was set slightly apart. The house had a name in one of those ridiculously fancy ornate metal arches athwart the entranceway, and my heart somehow contrived to sink even further when I read it.

_'Reichenbach'!_

At the end of the long approach road there was a group of men riding up to the house where a lone figure was sat on a bench outside. It was too far to recognize any of them, but I thought even at this distance that the seated man looked familiar.

“May I borrow your binoculars?” I asked Mr. Garrick. 

He nodded and handed them over to me, and I focused them until the people came into vision.

The next few seconds seemed to pass painfully slowly, as three things happened almost at once. First, I recognized that the seated figure was my Sherlock. That should have reassured me, but the second thing was that I also recognised one of the men approaching him was Professor James Moriarty, and presumably the six other men were all his. I watched for a moment in shock, then lowered the binoculars to say something to Mr. Garrick.

The third thing. There was an almighty explosion which shook the cart, even at this distance. The horse whinnied and almost bolted, but Mr. Garrick held onto the reins, as what had been the house was blown to kingdom come. Debris rained down just a dozen or so yards away, and in a wide area around the ruins. I stared in horror.

“No!” I cried.

I tried to leap off the cart and race through the still falling debris, even though I knew in my heart of hearts that no-one could possibly have survived that explosion. Mr. Garrick easily restrained me.

“We need to get you away from here”, he said firmly, hoisting himself up into the cart and taking the reins from me. “Guilford and his men have already dealt with the back-up; fortunately there were just four of them. Let's go.”

“But Sherlock.....” I began.

“No”, he said, sounding almost angry. “I am taking you back to town. We are leaving.”

I was too dumbstruck to argue, and he drove us back to Lincoln in silence.

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Mr. Garrick disappeared once he had deposited me at Mr. Henderson's guest house in the town – he was kind enough to take me to my room and leave me there - and it struck me as almost comical that I was a man in a foreign country with no money of my own, and completely at the mercy of someone several of whose family loathed me. 

And I had lost Sherlock. My Sherlock. The man I loved.

I had dried my face and was in some control of my emotions when Mr. Garrick returned. If he noticed my falling apart then he was kind enough not to comment on it, although it soon emerged that he had other, more pressing concerns.

“Look doctor, here is how it is”, he said. “The good news is that that bastard Professor Moriarty is dead, and down there giving Old Nick some serious competition, no doubt. The bad news is that he has six family members scattered across Europe, none of whom are going to take kindly to the fact that someone just eliminated their fellow scum. That is, of course, if they find out.”

“What do you mean, _if?”_ I asked testily. “How could they not?”

“The family does not talk much, so the last they know is the court case and his leaving England”, he said. “I can make it look like he just drowned or something, anything so that they do not get a body. If they ever do find out, then they will certainly be gunning for you. So if you want to go back to England it will have to be on the understanding that you may need to repeat this flit again, and at short notice.”

“Can you not do anything about them?” I asked anxiously. 

“Only monitor them through the German, Italian and French police”, he said. “Although if they ever come to England, it will be a different matter. But like this time, we would have to have you leaving the country the moment they arrived, if not before.”

I snorted a laugh.

“What's so funny?” he asked.

“Your family hates me yet you just saved my life, and I may need to trust you with my life at some time in the future”, I smiled. “Thank you, by the way.”

“It was a pleasure”, he said. “I just wish....”

He stopped. I sighed, knowing full well what he had been about to say.

“I know”, I said sadly. “I wish that too.”

He was kind enough to leave me before I broke down.

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_Notes:_   
_† Croesus (c. 560-546 BC). King of Lydia, a Greek state in what is now western Turkey. He wanted to know whether he would be victorious in battle against the mighty Persian Empire so sent to ask the famous Oracle of Delphi, and was assured to hear back that 'a great empire will be defeated'. He was then killed in battle, the 'great empire defeated' having proven to be Lydia, not Persia!_

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	26. Interlude: Life Of Riley

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1891\. A stand-in briefly puzzles over a crime scene in the MidWest. Very briefly.

_[Narration by Acting Deputy Sheriff Emmett Riley]_

When you're on the edge of what they call civilization way out here in Nebraska, you either develop a sense for what's not right or you end up regretting it from six feet under. So when a house on the edge of town was blown up and I was asked to investigate, I knew pretty quickly that things were somehow just 'off'. Apart from the fact that exploding houses, even out here.... not that common.

The place had been owned by an English guy called Holmes who'd moved to the edge of town a while back and had kept himself pretty much to himself, which is a good thing out here. Lincoln may think of itself as a metropolis but in many ways it's still a frontier town, especially from some of our local crims' point of view. This fellow had seemed harmless enough – at least until he got his house blown up!

Now for all the weird stuff, and there was plenty of that. Some other English guy called Moriarty – turned out he was one of the Old Country's worst villains, so nice of them to send _him_ over! - had been after this Holmes's brother for some reason and had tracked him here, then had hired seven of Lincoln's most disreputable (see under competition, strong) to ride out with him and kill them both. That much was proven – including the fact that there were seven bodies in the wreckage. They turned out to be the criminal guy and six of our own vermin, so where was the seventh? Come to that, where was the owner and his brother?

I found the answer to the first of those questions when I checked out the neighbouring properties, and found that the seventh and last crim was there having died of his injuries soon after the explosion. He had I guessed gone round the back to cut off any escape and had crawled a way before giving up the ghost. I also felt that the house owner, a snooty doctor called Forres, was hiding something though that was nothing but a hunch on my part.

Then there was the house. My brother-in-law, in between trying and succeeding in being the biggest dick in the entire MidWest, works in the building trade so I know a thing or two from working for him (apart from how to avoid committing justifiable homicide!). And the one thing I did notice about this small place was that the floor had been very solidly reinforced. Not only that, there were signs that some of the wreckage had been moved after the accident. Very odd.

I was only acting deputy at the time, and that only because the regular one had had an accident that had rendered him unfit for work (it'd be beneath me to say that the sheriff had shot him in the nether regions after finding him in bed with the old man's teenage daughter, so I'd better not). I thought about whether to report all I had found, then something odd happened. The home owner turned up – he said he'd been away the date of the explosion escorting his brother on his way back to England as far as St. Louis. I wondered about that 'specially as I'd since found out the place had been completely insured, but in a weird way he somehow convinced me to drop it. He didn't threaten me at all, yet when he left I felt certain that I had to just 'gloss over' what had happened and move on.

I did wonder, though, especially when the very next month a cousin I'd never heard of died over in California and left virtually all their huge estate to me. Which would mean that I had to move to the west coast far away from Lincoln and its exploding houses.

Hmm.

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End file.
